LIB" OF CONGRESS' 

•BTtnStr-w 

.elf. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



ENDLESS PUNISHMENT: 



SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR, AND REASONABLENESS OF 
FUTURE ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



BY 



NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D., 

PASTOR OF UNION CHURCH, BOSTON ; AUTHOR 
OF "at EVENTIDE," ETC. 







BOSTON: 

D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY, 
Cor. Franklin and Hawley Sts. 



pt 






COPYRIGHT, 
1S78, 
By D. Lothrop & Co. 



Thk Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 

1 !■■ 1 1 H1» r ■ ■ . ■---- 



Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
No. 19 Spring Lane. 



C0KKESP0NDE2TCE. 



Boston. 
Rev. S. Cobb, Editor of the Christian Freeman. 

Dear Sir : I have received your printed note in your paper 
of the 25th ult., in which you say : 

"And now I respectfully invite you. and proffer you the 
columns of the Christian Freeman for the work, to show the 
Scripturahiess of future, endless punishment. This will 
afford you an opportunity to carry your strongest reasons into 
several thousands of Universalist families; and I earnestly 
hope that you will accept my proposition." 

The form in which you propose that I should do this, viz., 
by an exposition of isolated proof texts, each to be debated 
by you before I proceed to another, does not strike me 
favorably. I will comply with your invitation, if you will 
allow me to do it in my own way, — upon one condition, that 
there shall be no notes or comments on what I write in the 
number or numbers of your paper containing my communica- 
tion. 

Very respectfully yours, 

N. ADAMS. 

Representations have been made in some of the public 
prints respecting the nature and intention of the following 
article, which are wholly at variance with my design. I am 

5 



6 CORRESPONDENCE. 

entering into no controversy, — this being the only article 
which I have at any time expected to prepare for the paper. 
Having been invited to preach in Hollis Street Church a 
sermon, prepared for my own congregation, on the Reasona- 
bleness of Endless Punishment, I was not at liberty, of course, 
to present any other view than that which the sermon contained, 
incomplete as all such presentations must be without a scrip- 
tural argument. While I was purposing to make, on some 
future occasion, a statement of the scriptural view, both of 
the nature and extent, of future retribution, an invitation to 
write on that subject in this paper unexpectedly occurred. 
I proceed, therefore, to fulfil my original purpose, and respect- 
fully submit the following statement, with no thought of con- 
tinuing the discussion. N. A. 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 



The invitation from the editor of this paper to make a 
statement of views which the " several thousands of families " 
who, it is said, will read this paper, repudiate, imposes a respon- 
sible, yet, for some reasons, a gratifying task. The names of 
not a few among my ministerial brethren occur to me, in 
whose able and more competent hands I would gladly place 
this labor, both for the gratification of the reader, and, as I 
view it, for the truth's sake. I feel encouraged in this work 
by the comparative regard which many in this denomination 
profess for the Bible. They do not assail it, as the manner 
of some is who differ from us; but their desire to make it 
speak in their favor secures for it an acknowledgment of its 
authority. As an illustration of this remark, I refer to a 
Review of Rev. T. S. King's "Two Discourses," by Rev. 
Dr. Thomas Whittemore, in the Universalist Quarterly and 
General Review, October, 1858. Dr. W. says : " It seems to 
us impossible to preserve the public reverence for the Bible, 
if we suffer ourselves to speak about it as Mr. King has done." 
" The four Gospels, according to Mr. K., are mere shreds and 

7 



8 INTRODUCTORY. 

tatters of what Christ taught. His manner of teaching was 
so peculiar, and so poetical and fanciful, that it is quite a 
wonder that we have even those tatters." "He (Mr. K.) 
speaks of God choosing to instruct the Church through a few 
fragmentary flashes of poetry. Good God ! What an idea 
of revelation ! "What an idea of Jesus as a teacher ! He has 
lost sight of ' the true light which lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world.' " (p. 377.) 

Inasmuch as nothing but the clearest conviction that this 
doctrine of endless retribution is revealed in the Bible would 
allow us for a moment to believe and inculcate the fearful 
truth, which all who believe it receive with the most solemn 
awe, it awakens confidence and friendly feeling to think that 
the most of those who will read this article, thus regard the 
testimony of Scripture, explained by the ordinary rules of 
language, to be of binding authority. 

I have also been led to think of this denomination as includ- 
ing many who are much exercised in their minds on the subject 
of future punishment. It is a welcome effort to show such 
individuals that some of their thoughts with regard to this 
subject and its advocates, are, perhaps, disproportioned and 
exaggerated. The most of those who believe in future, end- 
less punishment, have far more peace of mind with regard 
to it than they appear to have who deny it ; for with evangeli- 
cal believers it sinks into its just proportion in the universal 
government of God, as the State's Prison, Courts of Law, 
Offices of Justice, blend, like the tonic element of iron in the 
blood, into the life of a commonwealth with its virtuous and 
happy homes, its hundreds of thousands of joyous children, 
its churches, its products, its whole prosperous tide of affairs. 
Though hell is not the central figure in the religious ideas of 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

evangelical Christians, the belief in future, endless retribution 
does exert its powerful influence upon us. We know that it 
is capable of vast abuse, as we see illustrated in the direful 
influence of its perversion by the Church of Rome. But we 
find it explicitly revealed, and "knowing, therefore, the 
terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." If it were preached 
still more affectionately and plainly by us, conscious of our 
ill desert and of our obligations to redeeming love, there 
would be a nearer approach to the apostolic model. Our pre- 
vailing associations with this doctrine, we are happy to say, 
are those of deliverance, through the atoning death of the 
Son of God. It is in connection with his sacrifice for us that 
we always endeavor to preach it ; so that we trust we may say 
concerning our system of faith, as it is said of heaven, "the 
Lamb is the light thereof." While we believe that the con- 
templation of future misery, apart from the cross of Christ, 
would be hurtful to the mind and heart, we also feel that it 
cannot be of healthful tendency with our moral natures to 
base our religious associations mainly on the one idea of 
opposition to endless punishment. An evil thing, real or 
imaginary, which we inordinately, or upon wrong principles, 
oppose, has a retroactive influence on our minds and hearts, 
corresponding to its own baleful nature. 

It is with such views that I now write, — not, principally, 
with antagonists in my mind, though my statements will meet 
with antagonism, — so that if any are persuaded by counter 
statements that these views are unscriptural, they will do me 
the favor, at least, to think of me as their sincere well-wisher 
and friend, and as one who has the same eternal interests 
embarked in this question as themselves. Let us also keep 
in mind that mere argumentation never convinces men of 



10 INTRODUCTORY. 

scriptural truths, but that there must be on our part an expe- 
rience, wrought by the Holy Spirit in answer to prayer, to 
interpret things aright, which otherwise will be stumbling- 
blocks and foolishness. But, without further preface, I pro- 
ceed to my argument. 



SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT 

FOE, 

FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

11 



SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT 

FOR 

FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



i. 

The Scriptures teach that there is a penalty 
fc»r disobedience awaiting the finally impen- 
itent. 

THIS is plainly declared in Kom. ii. 5-12, 16 : 
" But after thy hardness and impenitent 
heart, treasurest up unto thyself wrath against 
the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous 
judgment of God, who will render to every man 
according to his deeds : to them who, by patient 
continuance in well doing, seek for glory, and 
honor, and immortality, eternal life ; but unto 
them that are contentious, and do not obey the 
truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and 
wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul 



14 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

of man that doeth evil ; of the Jew first, and 
also of the Gentile : but glory, honor, and peace 
to every man that worketh good; to the Jew 
first, and also to the Gentile : for there is no 
respect of persons with God. For as many as 
have sinned without law, shall also perish with- 
out law ; and as many as have sinned in the law, 
shall be judged by the law," "in the day when 
God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus 
Christ according to my gospel." The paren- 
thetic passages omitted here, which occur before 
the last of these sentences, are a direct assertion 
of the full accountableness of the heathen world 
to the tribunal of God, for their sins against 
their consciences and the light of nature. I 
take this whole passage of Scripture as a reve- 
lation of a future judgment and retribution, in 
which all men are to be judged and treated 
according to their works. 

The ideas which are presented of heaven, both 
by Christ and his apostles, come to us through 
objects of sense. Every one supposes that by 
these images, as, for example, " sitting with 
Christ at his table in his kingdom," "new wine," 
"beholding his glory," and " gates of pearl," 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 15 

"streets of gold," "harps" and "crowns," it is 
intended to give us the idea of the highest 
pleasure of which our natures, body and soul, 
shall in another world be capable. We never 
subtract anything from these images of heavenly 
joy, saying, They are only metaphors ; we rather 
say, Language here is intensified, to convey the 
ideas of future happiness. And as we believe 
that we shall have bodies in heaven " like unto " 
the Saviour's " glorious body," we are never 
unwilling to think that there will be enjoyments 
adapted to the body with the soul — spiritual, 
of course, in both cases, and yet beautifully dis- 
tinguished, but capable of blending, as in this 
world. This way of representing unseen things 
to us is not so much " Oriental " as the only 
possible way, at present, of communicating spir- 
itual objects" to our understanding. 

But while the attractions of heaven suffer 
nothing by reason of criticisms upon the lan- 
guage in which they are presented, some do not 
use the same tolerance, nor apply the same prin- 
ciples of interpretation, when they read or speak 
of future punishment. Here, they say, all is 
metaphorical, Oriental ; they select certain im- 



16 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

ages, and ask if any suppose that the wicked 
are, literally, to suffer such things, from just 
these elements of pain. But the representations 
of heaven are certainly obnoxious to the very 
same criticisms, and similar questions may be 
asked concerning them. But being of a pleasur- 
able nature, they escape criticism. Therefore, 
if we are inquired of in either case, Do you 
believe that these things are literally so ? the 
proper answer seems to be in both cases, Either 
these things, or things which now can only be 
expressed by them. Those earthly symbols ap- 
proach nearer than anything with which we are 
now acquainted, to the things "signified. 

The condition of the wicked after death is 
represented through such symbols by Christ and 
his apostles as a state of positive punishment. 
With a desire to speak cautiously on such a 
point, and to follow only the most obvious lead- 
ings of Scripture, very many are constrained to 
believe that while the finally impenitent will 
experience the consequences naturally flowing 
from their moral condition, those consequences 
of their sins will be kept alive by the power of 
God, and that continual sin will receive con- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 17 

» 

tinually Dew punishment. In the sermon on the 
reasonableness of endless punishment (see the 
preface), I assumed, for the sake of the argu- 
ment, that future misery should consist only in 
the natural consequences of evil, and then ar- 
gued that it was reasonable that these should be 
endless. I also deprecated any inquiry beyond 
the plain language of the New Testament as to 
the elements of punishment. The subject for- 
bade any extended consideration of the nature of 
future punishment, nor did I undertake to state 
my own belief on that point. In attempting now 
to show that the Scriptures represent the future 
condition of the wicked to be a state of punish- 
ment, it will be submitted to the reader whether 
infliction from the hand of God be not neces- 
sarily involved from the language of the Bible. 

One of those indirect proofs of a thing which 
sometimes are more forcible and convincing than 
direct statements, occurs in the words of Christ, 
which I will refer to as proving the future 
punishment of the wicked, in which he tells us 
to "fear Him ivhich is able to destroy both soul 
and body in hell."* 

* Matt. x. 28. 

2 



18 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 



# 



If God has merely the natural ability to do 
this, while his character makes it morally impos- 
sible that he should ever do it, the illustration is 
singularly at fault. It would never be proper to 
tell a child, as a reason why it should fear its 
father and mother, that they have power to 
inflict a punishment which we know is morally 
impossible. Their mere natural ability to inflict 
it would not justify the exhortation, " Yea, I 
say unto you, fear them." To associate the idea 
of destroying both body and soul in hell with 
our proper fear of God, our heavenly Father, if 
he would do. no such thing, would not be in 
accordance with truth. 

Some, to avoid this difficulty, say that the 
passage means merely that God can destroy life. 
But so can they who kill the body. There is 
something more which God alone can do, and 
which we need rather to fear. Others, knowing 
that the original word for hell in this passage 
cannot mean the grave, propose to render the 
warning thus : that God can cast those whom he 
kills into the valley of Hinnom. But so could 
assassins or judicial executioners. We still look 
for that which God alone can do. Some say it 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 19 

must be annihilation. But the valley of Hinnom 
is notoriously symbolical of perpetuity — the fire 
always burning, the worm ever breeding. Why, 
moreover, should anyplace be specified in which 
the annihilation, which is the same thing every- 
where, should occur ? Or what appropriateness 
is there in speaking of the soul as being annihi- 
lated there ? Destroying both soul and body in 
hell seems to be equivalent to that expression, 
"everlasting destruction,"— an apparent con- 
tradiction of terms, but conveying the idea of 
perpetual loss and misery. 

We get no relief from these difficulties with 
the passage if we turn to the milder form in 
which the idea is expressed in Luke xii. 5: 
"Fear Him which after he hath killed hath 
power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, 
Fear him ; " for Gehenna, understood literally as 
the valley of Hinnom, presents to the mind the 
most terrific image of positive misery. Nothing 
can be more revolting or fearful. Let those who 
are jealous at imputations cast upon the charac- 
ter of God by the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment, explain how Jesus could even suggest the 
idea of the Father casting his offspring into a 



20 SCRIPTTJEAL ARGUMENT FOR. 

place, the name of which was borrowed from the 
most fearful object then known to his hearers. 
Until this passage is shown to imply no punish- 
ment from the hand of God, we must regard it 
as an impregnable proof of future visitations of 
misery upon the wicked. 

Some who believe in future punishment seek 
to mitigate the influence of the dread truth upon 
their feelings by the theory that future punish- 
ment will consist only in the natural effects of 
sin. This relieves them of the necessity to think 
that God will inflict anything directly upon the 
wicked. 

One thing seems incontrovertible, viz. : the 
Bible does not teach us that sin is its own com- 
plete punishment. It is true that without the 
elements of misery in themselves, the Bible tells 
us, sinners could not be made miserable ; nor 
would outward inflictions constitute punishment, 
unless there were something within for the fire 
to kindle. But it admits of a question whether, 
if the sinner should be left entirely to himself, 
undisturbed by any external power, adding new 
energy to sorrow, or opening new sources of it, 
he could not in time adjust himself, as in this 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 21 

world, to any circumstances. Even in this 
world, trouble, or the infliction of pain and sor- 
row, is necessary to rouse the conscience. To 
some extent God punishes men in this world, for 
this purpose. " Because they have no changes, 
therefore they fear not God." " Moab hath 
been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled 
on his lees, and hath not been emptied from 
vessel to vessel." The seventy-third Psalm de- 
scribes the wicked who " are not in trouble 
as other men ; neither are they plagued like 
other men." Hence " their strength is firm." 
But even tribulation is powerless in many cases, 
and the sinner is either emboldened by temporary 
respite, or provoked by the rod to further oppo- 
sition. Pharaoh is an eminent example of this. 
It is said of another, " And in the time of his 
distress did he trespass yet more against the 
Lord; this is that king Ahaz." Other passages 
in accordance with these, to prove the positions 
just laid down, might easily be cited. 

So that, however terrible and bitter the con- 
dition of the sinner might be at first, it is not 
inconceivable that he should at last say, with 
Satan in Paradise Lost, " Hail ! horrors, hail ! 



22 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

and thou, profoundest hell!" if God would but 
depart from him ! Sinking into a torpid, brutish 
state, or rousing themselves into defiant forms 
of hatred and blasphemy, occupying themselves 
with plots and counterplots in their strife with 
each other, the wicked in hell, like bad or aban- 
doned people here, might make their condition 
tolerable. They would, for example, feel the 
need of subordination among themselves for 
their own protection; selfishness would suggest 
many alleviations of misery by mutual forbear- 
ance ; and as the worst of men — pirates, gam- 
blers, debauchees — have codes of honor, and 
ambition its fawning flatteries, and pride smoth- 
ers its resentment, and selfishness in all its 
forms is compelled to put on the mask of sub- 
mission and obeisance, so the wicked, if left to 
themselves, even with their wickedness festering 
and their crimes becoming gigantic, might man- 
age, by self-control, to reduce things into a 
system which to their wretched natures might, 
in very many cases, be even tolerable. Sin 
itself is no misery to a sinner; it must meet 
with ill success, it must be compelled to feel a 
superior power acting contrary to itself; then, 



FUTUEE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 23 

indeed, it is the occasion of miser}^. It is no 
sorrow to wicked men here, for God to depart 
from them ; it is rather their desire ; " therefore 
they say unto God, Depart from us, for we de- 
sire not the knowledge of thy ways." Saul 
never would have uttered that bitter cry, " God 
is departed from me, and is become my enemy," 
if the Philistines had not pursued hard after 
him. God and he had been for a long time far 
apart ; but very little did Saul care for this, 
until the day of his calamity made haste. 

If, therefore, there is to be, in the strict sense 
of the term, punishment after death, it would 
seem that there must, in the nature of things, 
be visitations upon the wicked of that which 
the Bible calls " indignation and wrath, tribula- 
tion and anguish." While there must be in the 
sinner himself a state of things which will make 
these inflictions punishment, there must also be 
a mighty hand stretched out forever to make the 
future condition of the wicked, one of retribu- 
tion. There is both error and truth in the com- 
mon saying with many that future misery will 
proceed from conscience; — error, if it be sup- 
posed that conscience left to itself will occasion 



24 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

torment ; for, if in this world, with so much to 
stimulate conscience, it so easily falls asleep, the 
provocations, and the necessity of self-defence, 
and redress, and all the bad influences of hell, 
must have the power totally to sear it; — but 
there is truth in the saying, if it be allowed that 
God is to visit the wicked in ways that will 
excite conscience against them ; this would be 
" infliction," compared with which fire and brim- 
stone, though the most appalling images of tor- 
ture we can easily conceive, do not convey more 
terrible ideas of retribution. 

Now, the Bible is continually representing the 
wicked as receiving from God positive inflic- 
tions, and not merely as being abandoned to 
themselves. Even when it speaks of many 
sources of misery which might seem to be the 
natural consequences of their sin, it often repre- 
sents these consequences as being administered 
by the direct agency of the Almighty. So that 
the two things seem to be combined. " Upon the 
wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, 
and a horrible tempest ; this shall be the por- 
tion of their cup." " Now consider this, ye that 
forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 25 

none to deliver." " God is angry with the wicked 
every day. If he turn not, he will whet his 
sword ; he hath bent his bow and made it 
ready." These passages teach that sinners will 
not merely be left to the natural consequences 
of sin. The ideas of arrest, and of execution, 
are here presented; the t transgressor is not left 
to himself, with merely his sin for his punish- 
ment. Then, again, we read : " Woe unto the 
wicked ; it shall be ill with him ; for the reward 
of his hands shall be given him." u Yea, woe 
unto them also when I depart from them." 
Even though the wicked should not suffer oth- 
erwise, nor to a greater degree, than they are 
capable of suffering in their minds here, yet, if 
they are to be punished, these sufferings must be 
kept active by an outward power; for their nat- 
ural tendency is to harden and stupefy, or to 
excite passions whose gratification affords a cer- 
tain redress. 

All this we may believe without venturing 
one step into the dominion of fancy to depict 
the kind and manner of those inflictions which 
are necessary to constitute punishment. Nor is 
it necessary ; for knowing as we do by experi- 



26 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

ence and observation what the passions of the 
human heart are when restraint is weakened or 
removed, we need no external images of woe to 
represent what it must be for God to minister 
excitement to them by his presence and his 
intercourse with them. In a sense he departs 
from them, as he did from Saul. By this is sig- 
nified the withdrawal of everything merciful, 
alleviating, hopeful, and of a restraining reform- 
atory nature. Yet he will always make his 
presence to be felt ; for " if I make my bed in 
hell, behold thou art there." While, therefore, 
material images of woe, if too specific, seem to 
degrade the subject, and are apt to pass over, in 
their effect on some, from the extreme of horror 
to the grotesque, they are not objectionable on 
the score of over-statement; nothing which fancy 
ever depicted being capable of expressing the 
misery which must be felt by a depraved soul 
opposed to God and with God for its punisher. 
We have only to think of what is sometimes 
felt at funerals and closing graves, to see what 
future misery must be in one of its merely 
incidental forms — the loss of all good forever. 
If God shall but keep perpetually fresh such 



FUTUBE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 27 

sorrows as men feel here, he will fulfil a large 
part of that which the Saviour and the apostles 
have declared to be the future portion of the 
wicked. So that when good men like Leighton, 
Baxter, Andrew Fuller, the Wesleys, Watts, and 
Edwards, portray, according to their several con- 
ceptions, the pains of the wicked, they fall far 
below the truth ; and their representations, if at 
all objectionable, are not so for the reason that 
they surpass the dread reality ; for that is impos- 
sible. Let us now consider the following pas- 
sages : — 

" As therefore the tares are gathered and are 
burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of 
the world. The Son of man shall send forth his 
angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom 
all things that offend and them which do ini- 
quity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire ; 
there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 
These same closing words are used a few verses 
afterwards, in explaining the parable of the net. 
Not to burden the attention of the reader, there 
is one passage more which I will quote in con- 
nection with the preceding, for the sake of briefly 
remarking upon them, before passing to the next 
topic. 



28 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

The passage to which I refer is: "And the 
third angel followed them, saying with a loud 
voice, If any man worship the beast and his 
image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in 
his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the 
wrath of God which is poured out without mix- 
ture into the cup of his indignation ; and he 
shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in 
the presence of the holy angels, and in the pres- 
ence of the Lamb : and the smoke of their tor- 
ment ascendeth up forever and ever : and they 
have no rest, day nor night, who worship the 
beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth 
the mark of his name." * 

If the Bible says that angels, at the last day, 
inflict on the wicked that which can best be 
compared only to casting them into a furnace of 
fire, I will implicitly believe it. My reason as- 
certains whether this is said, beyond reasonable 
doubt; then reason bows to revelation. I will 
not object that such employment does not con- 
sist with my conceptions of angelic natures. If 
I did, the question would be appropriate, Do }~ou 
consent that a holy angel should have cut off the 
hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians of 

* Rev. xiv. 9-11. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 29 

Sennacherib's army in one night, and that an- 
other should have directed the pestilence of three 
days in Israel ? What will you do about these 
things? You are disposed, perhaps, to associate 
angels with "birds and flowers," with elves and 
fairies, and not with garments rolled in blood, or 
hands reeking with slaughter. My reply is, I 
will correct my natural or acquired feelings by 
the word of God. But the word of God says 
that angels will cast " all things that offend, and 
them which do iniquity, into a furnace of fire." 
Inanimate things are not meant ; for it is added, 
" there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 
Moreover, the word of. God says that the idola- 
trous worshippers of the beast shall be tormented 
with fire and brimstone in the presence of the 
holy angels and of the Lamb. 

My only question will be again, Does the Bible 
mean by this that men will be made to suffer in 
a way which is most appropriately expressed by 
fire and brimstone ; that even if it be not literally 
so, there would really be nothing to choose be- 
tween the two things, the figure and the literal 
meaning ? And does it say that holy angels, and 
the Lamb of God himself, will look on, approve, 



30 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

and confirm the infliction? If so, I fully and 
firmly believe it ; be it figurative or literal, I be- 
lieve it, and I will take it to be the same as lit- 
eral. And I will postpone the explanation to 
my natural feelings, till I know more. I find 
that when men fully understand the enormities 
of some outrage upon a fellow-creature, and the 
soul is filled with them, the punishment, swift or 
slow, meets with no repugnance in their nature. 
Perhaps when I know more about sin and unbe- 
lief, it will be so with regard to future punish- 
ment. Only let me be persuaded that the lan- 
guage of the Bible, properly interpreted, declares 
anything ; then there is no appeal. 

But I now respectfully ask the attention of 
the reader, when I say, that if I did not believe 
in there being a state of future punishment 
which justifies such language, I fear that I could 
not stop short of the boldest infidelity. I might 
even assail the Bible as unfit to be read. It is 
no relief to tell me that the language does not 
mean all which it would seem to convey. I 
should reply, This is bad language, unless there 
be something which language of this sort only 
can express. But if it be an exaggeration of a 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 31 

truth, or if, for the sake of impression, an idea is 
conveyed which is false, a man may as well apol- 
ogize to me for a profane blasphemer, saying that 
his oaths do not really mean all which they ex- 
press, as try to reconcile me to the belief that 
such words as these are inspired. It is not the 
truth which offends me, but the untruthfulness of 
the language. The words are not decorous ; my 
moral sense is abused, when I read such expres- 
sions, unless substantial truth requires them. The 
sin is not against my faith, but against my under- 
standing. If there be nothing in holy angels, 
and in the Saviour, which corresponds to these 
representations, I should be tempted to go at 
once from the Bible to the teaching and preach- 
ing of some man who rejects the Bible, and re- 
jects it partly because it uses such language. 
But where should I find such a preacher, who 
would not trouble me with the inconsistency of 
taking his text every Sabbath from the very book 
from which I seek to flee ? So true is it that 
the stoutest unbeliever cannot shake off the hold 
which the Bible has upon his moral nature. Ab- 
solute scepticism seems to be as impossible as 
universal knowledge. 



32 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

"Cast them into a furnace of fire," "in the 
presence of the holy angels," " and of the Lamb." 
Some tell me that this is " Oriental ; " some, that 
it is merely " flame-picture ; " some, that it is 
"mere hyperbole." JSTow, if a mere show of dis- 
pleasure is signified by this language, the objec- 
tion is, not to the punishment, but, that such 
inappropriate, such defamatory representations 
should be used in connection with the holy an- 
gels and the Lamb of God. If you will insist 
that the words are true, I have no objection to 
make. But the Bible does not observe the ordi- 
nary laws of decorum in language, unless truth 
would be violated by the use of other and milder 
terms than these, in describing the future inflic- 
tion of punishment upon the wicked. 

The following scriptures, teaching that the 
wicked are in misery after death, confirm the 
foregoing statements : " The wicked is driven 
away in his wickedness." "The ungodly are 
like the chaff which the wind drive th away." 
" The men of Sodom were wicked and sinners 
before God exceedingly." " And the Lord rained 
fire and brimstone out of heaven, and destroyed 
them all." " The rich man died, and was buried ; 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 83 



and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in tor- 
ment." " Judas by transgression fell, and went 
to his own place." " If ye believe not that I 
am he, ye shall die in your sins." " And where 
I am, thither ye cannot come." 

He who will sa} r that such men as are here 
described meet in death with a change of char- 
acter which prepares them at once for happiness, 
may as well assert, once for all, that delusion is 
practised upon us by the representations of the 
Bible ; that the object is merely to frighten the 
living ; that apparent judgments upon the 
wicked, death and its terrors, are merely a dumb 
show, a tragic demonstration, a dissolving view 
turning, within the veil, into manifestations of 
compassion and love. There have not been 
wanting men, who, in their concern for the 
character of God, have interpreted his words of 
vengeance, and his terrible acts towards the 
wicked, in this manner — as though such de- 
ception were any relief from imputations of 
undue severity. Archbishop Tillotson ventured 
such an explanation, and President Edwards's 
ironical reproof of him and others, for betraying 
their Maker's secret, is well known. There are 
3 



34 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

some even now who, like the sect of Maniehees, 
seem to hold that all evil resides in matter, and 
therefore that in the separation of the soul 
from the body the soul becomes pure. But the 
question before us is, What do the Scriptures 
teach? If there be anything conclusive in 
positive statements, this is placed beyond all 
reasonable dispute — that some men die in their 
sins, and that after death they have in them- 
selves the elements of miseiy. The rich man 
surely is an instance of this. Judas's " own 
place " was not heaven. 

We have seen thus far that, while the Scrip- 
tures represent the wicked themselves to be an 
essential source of their own misery, future pun- 
ishment necessarily implies infliction, or excita- 
tion, from a source beyond the sinner himself. 
Some opprobriously call this "the doctrine of 
endless torture." But there is something more 
terrible here than " torture." If the sinner 
were made to feel constantly that he is in the 
hands of a torturer, many a passion of his nature 
might minister strength to his resistance, and 
impart fortitude. But to have his own self ex- 
cited against him forever, so as to seem the prox- 






FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 35 

imate cause of his misery, is the more helpless 
woe. But however the sources of it may be 
combined, we have seen that the wicked are in 
misery after death. The question now is, Will 
their misery remain forever ? Do the Scriptures 
teach that the punishment of the wicked, made 
up as it necessarily is from the natural conse- 
quences of evil-doing and positive inflictions from 
the hand of God, will be without end? The 
affirmative of this question I have undertaken 
to prove. 

But it may be said, You undertake an impos- 
sible task, because you know nothing of futurity. 
Principles may yet be evolved which now are 
slumbering in the bosom of God. You must 
journey farther than man has gone before you 
can decide this subject. " Have the gates of 
death been opened to thee ? or hast thou seen 
the doors of the shadow of death? " 

The only question to be considered is, What do 
the Scriptures now teach as to the future condi- 
tion of the wicked ? Do they, or do they not, 
represent it as unalterable ? If we can ascer- 
tain this we need not perplex ourselves as to 
ulterior revelations : nor should we refuse to 



86 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

receive the present testimony of God, with the 
objection that something more may possibly be 
said hereafter. What, then, does the Bible 
teach us as to the state and prospects of the im- 
penitent after death ? 

Let the reader now endeavor to lay out of the 
question all considerations relating to the rea- 
sonableness or justice of future, endless punish- 
ment. Let him not foreclose the discussion in 
his own mind by saying that it is unreasonable 
and unjust, and therefore that it cannot be in the 
Bible. Rather let him first ascertain whether it 
be taught there, and then, if he will, let him de- 
bate with himself whether finding it there, he 
will, or will not, receive the Bible itself. 

In considering whether the Scriptures teach 
that the punishment of the wicked will be with- 
out end, we will see if the following proposi- 
tion can be maintained. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 37 



II. 



Bedemption by Christ is represented as having 
for its object salvation from final perdition. 

IF upon the failure of all which is done in re- 
demption to save men, they are to be sub- 
jected to another probation after death, there are 
powerful reasons to think that the surest way 
to effect their recovery is, to let them know be- 
forehand that God will give them a second trial. 
For this is manifestly the way in which God 
proceeded with the Hebrew people, whose refor- 
mation in this world, and whose allegiance, he 
was seeking to secure. In foresight of their 
apostasy and punishment, they were told before- 
hand that they should have a second probation. 
The following words are an explicit declaration 
to this effect, and are an instance of divine wis- 
dom which man would never have devised, from 
fear of consequences. After telling Israel of 
the happy fruit which would attend their obedi- 
ence, and the direful effects of their apostasy, 



38 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

instead of leaving them in doubt whether they 
will have a second probation, God expressly tells 
them that they shall be again restored. " When 
thou art in tribulation and all these things are 
come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou 
turn to the Lord thy God, and shalt be obedient 
unto his voice, (for the Lord thy God is a mer- 
ciful God,) he will not forsake thee, neither 
destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy 
fathers which he sware unto thee." * 

It might have been argued with much plausi- 
bleness that such an announcement would be 
inexpedient ; that it would have a direct effect 
to make men careless and presumptuous. But 
infinite wisdom judged otherwise, and proceeded 
at different times to say : " If his children forsake 
my law, then will I visit their transgressions 
with the rod ; — nevertheless my loving-kind- 
ness will I not utterly take from him." And 
again : " If my covenant be not with day and 
night, then will I cast off the seed of Jacob ; — 
for I will cause their captivity to return, and 
have mercy upon them." Again: "I will for 
this afflict the seed of David, but not forever." 

* Deut. iv. 30. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 39 

What principle in moral natures is there which 
makes this announcement, to sinners, of future 
clemency and restoration, wise and expedient ? 
The obvious answer is, Hope. Whether or not 
there can ever be repentance without hope, it is 
certain that hope is a powerful means of repent- 
ance. " How many hired servants of my father 
have bread enough and to spare, and I perish 
with hunger. I will arise and go to my father, 
and say unto him, Father, I have sinned." — 
The promise of a future trial, the explicit avowal 
of relenting in his displeasure, with a view 
to the final recovery of the transgressors, was 
deemed by the Most High to be essential in the 
exercise of his administration in ancient times. 
The admixture of hope in his threatenings, the 
line of light in the horizon below the coming 
tempest, was regarded by Jehovah as a necessary 
means of effecting the ultimate restoration of 
the Jews, so that, to this day, provision is made 
for hope to fasten its hand upon exceeding great 
and precious promises, the moment that the 
thought arises of turning to God. He would 
have the sinners think, in their deep distress 
under the chastising rod, that he would be 



40 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

found of them, if they returned and sought him, 
and that he made provision for hope even while 
the terrible blow was about to descend. 

In offering pardon and salvation to men 
through the sufferings and death of Christ, and 
in setting forth the consequences of neglecting 
so great salvation, if God does not intimate that, 
nevertheless, the wicked shall not be utterly cast 
off, surely it is not because it would be incon- 
sistent with the principles of moral government 
thus to mingle hope with chastisement. We 
have seen that intimations of future mercy were 
made to men who were abusing the most signal 
acts of divine favor ; and that to secure their 
future repentance, God judged it wise and pru- 
dent to prevent the ill effect which wrath and 
punishment might have upon them, by so order- 
ing it that they should recollect amidst their 
punishment that even long before the moment 
of descending wrath, he remembered mercy, and 
that, accordingly, when about to cast them off, 
he said, " How shall I give thee up ? — my heart 
is turned within me, my repentings are kindled 
together." Arid the anointed prophet said in 
his name, " He will return, he will have mercy 



FUTTJKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 41 

upon us ; and thou wilt cast their iniquities into 
the depths of the sea." All this, it will be re- 
membered, was not a sudden relenting; it was 
part of a plan announced so long beforehand as 
to give evidence of special design. 

We, therefore, say, that if do such foretokens 
of far distant mercy and forgiveness are now 
made to those who reject Christ, it cannot prop- 
erly be argued that it would be unsuitable, and 
that wisdom and prudence forbid. On the con- 
trary, such promises would be in accordance with 
those former dealings of God with men in which 
he has manifested the most peculiar love for 
transgressors. It would be analogous to his for- 
mer conduct should he intimate, in immediate 
connection with his threatenings, that if we neg- 
lect our present opportunity and means of salva- 
tion, and subject ourselves necessarily to a long 
and fearful discipline of sorrow, nevertheless the 
time will come when he will return and be paci- 
fied towards us for all which we have done. If 
no such intimations are given, we have strong 
presumptive evidence that it is because the con- 
dition of the wicked at death is final. 

For, as we read the threatenings against Edom, 



42 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

and Babylon, and Egypt, and Tyre, we find no 
words of promise mingled with the predictions 
of their doom. Probation for them is past ; 
hence, when God is declaring his vengeance 
against them, not one word is uttered which, in 
the hour of their downfall, would come to their 
memories as a ray of hope. The utter ruin and 
desolation of those kingdoms show the reason 
for withholding every promise of future mercy ; 
it was intended that their destruction should be 
final. 

But it may be said, Ts God under any obliga- 
tion to disclose all his future purposes with re- 
gard to the wicked ? Surely not ; but certainly 
he will not deceive us ; he is not obliged to tell 
us anything ; but if he tells us a part, he will 
not make false impressions. 

But some will say, It may now be wise in God 
to vary his plan, and suffer the wicked to "de- 
part" with the full expectation that their doom 
is forever ; and then he may interpose and save 
them. Who will deny that this is possible ? 

It is evidently the object of the gospel to save 
men here from their sins, and to rescue them 
from future misery, limited or endless. Is it 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 43 

honest, or would it not be like " false pretences," 
to make the impression that there is to be no 
further probation after death, if the idea is ut- 
terly inconsistent with the character of God? 
We know what is thought of one who offers his 
wares as positively the last, and then produces 
more. The question is simply this : Would God 
seek to save men by making them think that 
this is their only chance of pardon, when he 
knows that it is not to be the last ? But if God 
intended that we should believe this to be the 
last, who among the sons of the mighty is en- 
titled to the merit of having undeceived us ? It 
is impiety to assert that there is a future proba- 
tion, against the plain declarations of the Bible, 
if such declarations are made. 

Now let us examine the inspired record. At 
the very close of the Bible we read : "He that is 
unjust let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy 
let him be filthy still, and he that is righteous let 
him be righteous still, and he that is holy let him 
be holy still." As the "unjust" and "filthy" 
never could be directed to refrain, in this world, 
from efforts to become good, (unless their day of 
grace were past,) these words are obviously a 



44 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

declaration that character is unchangeable after 
death. In faithful consistency even to the last 
with the great distinguishing feature of the 
Christian religion, viz., regard for the individual, 
the closing words of the Bible have reference to 
each accountable member of the human family : 
u And behold I come quickly, and my reward is 
with me, to give to every man according as his 
work shall be." Here is the place where we 
should look for intimations, if any could be made, 
of future probation. Here is the promontory 
which runs down to the unfathomable main, 
looks forth on " that ocean we must sail so soon ; " 
and as it terminates all earthly efforts after salva- 
tion, does it give us one hint about some future 
method of recovery ? Are there signals pre- 
pared on this cape and headland, indicating to 
the eye of despair, afar off, that the cross of 
Christ holds out proposals of reconciliation still, 
to those who trampled it under foot, on their 
way to eternity? On the contrary, everything 
makes the impression on the vast majority of 
readers ever since these words were written, that 
the results of life are to be final. No hopeful 
class of probationers are represented as " with- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 45 

out," when the righteous have entered through 
the gates into the city. All the sublime images 
in the last chapters of this book come thronging 
down to that shore where inspiration lays aside 
its pen and loo]|s towards the shoreless waste be- 
yond time. It has been said that the Old Testa- 
ment ends with a curse. This is a mistake. It 
eifds with a promise of turning the hearts of 
fathers and children, to avert a curse. But no 
prediction of any turning of hearts in eternity 
occurs at the close of that book which gives us 
the last information respecting the future. Its 
silence is as impressive as its few decisive words. 
We can imagine how Christ would have drawn 
the picture of retribution had he followed the 
Old Testament, in doing so, in its hopeful and 
prophetic intermingling of light with the dark- 
ness. Making the prospect terrific, at first, be- 
yond all human power of description, to enforce 
the duty of immediate repentance, and to deter 
from sin, then appealing to our sense of propri- 
ety, our magnanimity, our shame, he would have 
told us how in the future, more or less remote, 
God would visit his erring and perverse children 
with his remonstrances : how he himself would 



46 SCRIPTTJftAL ARGUMENT FOE 

weep over them and repeat the offers of pardon ; 
and in view of all this we can imagine how he 
would expostulate. Such a procedure would 
accord with the principles of human nature and 
of the divine government, as illustrated in the 
history of Israel. Is the Saviour less compas- 
sionate and ready to forgive than the God of the 
Old Testament? — for we see God listening to 
catch the first sigh of repentance ; and when he 
hears it, he proclaims: "I have surely heard 
Ephraim bemoaning himself thus : Thou hast 
chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock 
unaccustomed to the yoke ; turn thou me and I 
shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God." 
Not one word like this do we hear from the lips 
of him who was the brightness of the Father's 
glory and the express image of his person. 
Where is prophecy, with her glowing tongue, 
foretelling, at the hour of captivity, the sinner's 
final return? The opening of hell, and the final 
release of Satan and his angels, and of wicked 
men, would have been an anticipation sublime 
beyond most other visions ; and, if allowable, it 
could not have failed to excite the imagination 
of seers and prophets. But where are the 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 47 

Isaiahs, stretching their vision beyond time and 
the captivity of hell, saying, Comfort ye, comfort 
ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye com- 
fortably to the cursed, and say unto them that 
their warfare is accomplished, that their iniquity 
is pardoned ; for they have received of the Lord's 
hand double for all their sins. Can it be that 
not even from you, beloved John, is there a vis- 
ion or a word of hope for sinners after death ? 
You saw the dead, small and great, stand before 
God, the books opened, and another book, which 
is the book of life. You saw the judgment, and 
the doom ; the lake of fire was first prepared by 
casting death and hell into it, and when all was 
ready, whosoever was not found written in the 
book of life, you saw him cast into the lake of 
fire. No syllable of mercy ? No visit from the 
angel that talked with thee, saying, Come up 
hither, to see, from a higher point, beyond that 
lake ? Have you no yearning look ? — not even 
one slightly musical dark saying upon the harp, 
to keep us from suspecting that God can ever be 
implacable ? In the Old Testament he relents 
and repents. " His soul was grieved for the 
misery of Israel." " How shall I make thee as 



48 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOE 

Admah ! How shall I set thee as Zeboim ! My 
heart is turned within me, my repentiDgs are 
kindled together." Is that Old Testament, which 
is represented by scoffers as "cruel," "sangui- 
nary," "vindictive," actually more merciful in 
its expressions towards rebellious Israel than the 
New Testament is towards men who died in 
their sins? 

How strange that He, who wept over Jerusa- 
lem, could say, " Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels," and let fall no expressions of commis- 
eration or word of hope, nor leave some elliptical 
"notwithstanding," — an unfinished sentence, a 
place with asterisks, a chance even for a guess 
that all would not be forever determined for the 
wicked, at the last day ! 

Mark the altered language, the different tone 
and manner of the Saviour towards the wicked 
in the other world, compared with his words and 
behavior towards our sinful race when he was on 
earth. " The master of the house has risen up, 
and shut to the door." They knock ; he says, 
" I tell you I know you not, whence ye are. De- 
part from me." The direction is, " Bind him, 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 49 

hand and foot." They " cut him asunder, and 
appoint him his portion," not with candidates for 
heaven, under discipline, but " with the hypo- 
crites." He is " thrust out." Christ uses the 
expressions, " lose his soul ; " "be cast away ; ' 
"salted with fire ;" ."grind him to powder;' 
"son of perdition;" "slay them before me;' 
" seek me and not find me ; " " gather the good 
and cast the bad away ; " " great gulf fixed ; ' 
"die in your sins;" "where I am ye cannot 
come." In various parts of the Bible we meet 
with phrases of the like tenor, — such as " wrath 
to come ; " " shame and everlasting contempt ; " 
" torment us before the time ; " " reap corrup- 
tion ; " "wages of sin is death ; " " more tolera- 
ble for Sodom in the day of judgment; " "mist 
of darkness forever and ever." Indeed, these 
incidental expressions, interwoven everywhere 
throughout the Bible, assume that the doctrine 
of future, endless punishment for sin is a matter 
of course. The common mode of referring to 
the future implies it. " Because there is wrath, 
beware lest he take thee away with his stroke ; " 
"then a great ransom will not deliver thee." "I 
will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when 
4 



50 SCEIPTTTEAL AEGUMENT FOE 

your fear oometh." The numerous passages of 
this tenor do not suggest any idea of future 
clemency. 

Paul thus declares the end of the wicked : 
" The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, 
with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking 
vengeance on them that knew not God, and obey 
not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ; who 
shall be punished w x ith everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord, and from the 
glory of his power, when he shall come to be 
glorified in his saints, and admired in all them 
that believe, for our testimony among you was 
believed in that day." That this does not apply 
to the destruction of Jerusalem, as the Papists 
and some Protestants would have us think, ap- 
pears from the next chapter, in which the Thes- 
salonians are told that " that day " is not " at 
hand," because the "man of sin" was first to be 
revealed. 

Then Peter follows him, and says, " But the 
heavens and the earth which are now, by the 
same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire 
against the day of judgment and perdition of 
ungodly men." 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 51 

Thus, while the Bible satisfies us that the re- 
demption made by Christ is a final effort to save 
men, we do not wonder that those who reject the 
Godhead of Christ and his sacrifice for sin, reject 
also the idea of endless punishment. There is 
no adequate necessity for a divine Saviour with 
his vicarious sacrifice, if there be no such pen- 
alty annexed to the law of God. Every man is 
then his own redeemer, either by obedience or 
by suffering. 

But the evangelical believer looks into the 
manger and upon the cross, and sees there his 
God incarnate. He sees, in that Christ, a sacri- 
fice for his sins. The world laugh him to scorn. 
They demand whether he believes that his God 
is dying; and every form of intellectual ridicule 
is poured upon him. He steadfastly maintains 
that " the Word was God," that " the Word was 
made flesh," that this incarnate Word was on 
the cross, " a ransom for many," " a propitiation 
through faith in his blood/' his sufferings a sub- 
stitute for the sinner's punishment. The be- 
liever looks to find some necessity for such an 
incarnation, and for the sacrificial death of such 
a being. He cannot find it in the need of 



52 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

example, moral suasion, or representation of the 
divine interest in him ; but, in the declaration 
that Christ was once offered to bear the sins of 
many, he sees the appropriateness of the incar- 
nation to give a divine worth and efficacy to suf- 
ferings which are to atone for sin. There is no 
revelation to be compared with this : " God was 
manifest in the flesh," and, he " was manifested 
to take away our sins." By all the methods of 
imagery, symbolism, predictions, and most mi- 
nute, pathetic delineations of his coming, his 
life, death, and resurrection ; by appeals from his 
own lips, and those of men " in Christ's stead ; " 
by that perpetual memorial of him, and of his 
sacrifice, the Lord's supper, men are admonished, 
and, "as though God did beseech them," urged 
to accept pardon through this infinite provision 
made for the forgiveness of sin. This produces 
the effect, generally, upon the mind, of a last 
effort. 

It might have been supposed that the work of 
Christ would suffice for the present dispensation, 
and that men rejecting or neglecting it would, in 
a future state, be approached by those influences 
which belong peculiarly to the work of the third 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 53 

person in the Godhead. But Christ said, "It is 
expedient for you that I go away ; for, if I go 
not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; 
but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And 
when he is come, he will reprove the world of 
sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." Some- 
thing more than ordinary divine influence is 
meant here by the Comforter ; for the Saviour's 
being in the world would not of course keep 
divine influence out of it, or prevent the disciples 
from receiving comfort in God. A special, divine 
agency is here recognized,' and, by all the laws 
of language, a special, divine, personal agent. 
His object is to reprove the world of sin, of right- 
eousness, and of judgment. All which is implied 
in the idea of moral omnipotence is thus made to 
bear upon the hearts and minds of men, to effect 
their reconciliation to God, through Christ. 

Resistance to these efforts in a certain way, it 
is declared, shall have the effect, however long a 
time before death it may be made, to consign the 
sinner to hopeless condemnation ; for " whoso- 
ever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall 
not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nei- 
ther in the world to come." 



54 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

It does not seem easy to explain how any one 
who "hath never forgiveness," " neither in this 
world, neither in the world to come," is to be 
saved ; nor by what moral distinctions it can 
be made to appear that some who commit one 
particular sin are justly condemned to a hope- 
less, unforgiven state, and that all the rest of 
mankind are to be restored. The work of the 
Holy Spirit, and the unpardonable sin against 
him, convince us that the effort of mercy to save 
men ends with life. Such words as these from 
Christ, "hath never forgiveness, but is in danger 
of eternal damnation," admit of no appeal. 

In this connection let it be observed that evan- 
gelical Christians regard the work of the Holy 
Spirit as of equal importance with the death of 
Christ, and as essential a part of the work 
of redemption. It is from sin that we are to 
be redeemed ; it is to holiness that we are 
to be restored ; hell and heaven are a consum- 
mation, respectively, of sin aud holiness. But 
we notice that those who reject the idea of 
future punishment dwell much on sin and holi- 
ness as being the sole objects of redemption, 
irrespective of the future state to which they 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 55 

lead. Olshausen says: " The Scriptures know 
no such pretended divestment of all egoism, 
that man needs as motives neither fear nor hope, 
whether of damnation or eternal happiness; — 
and rightly ; for it (i. e. this notion) exhibits 
itself either as fanatical error, as in Madame 
Guyon, or, which is doubtless most common, 
as indifference and torpidity."* However some 
may regard it as a narrow and selfish thing to 
make so much, as evangelical. Christians do, of 
"salvation" and " safety," ., we find that the 
New Testament sets us the example. Its chief 
burden is holiness, likeness to God ; but it ap- 
peals to our love of happiness and dread of 
pain; sentimental philosophy would substitute 
for these instincts a perception of the "good, the 
beautiful, and the true;" the gospel insists on 
these, but the way to reach, them is through the 
natural constitution which God has. given us. 
Inspiration does not disdain to say, " God so 
loved the world that he gave his only-begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish but have everlasting life." "He that be- 
lieveth shall be saved, and. he that believeth not 

* Commentary, v. 302. 



56 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

shall be damned." " We shall be saved from 
wrath through him." " Who have tied for re- 
fuge to lay hold on the hope set before us." 
" What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the 
whole world, and lose his own soul ; or what 
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' 
The attempt to show that all this is unworthy 
of our "noble aspirations," is only professing to 
be wise ; but " the foolishness of God is wiser 
than men." The work of the Holy Spirit in 
applying the redemption by Christ to the souls 
of men has for its object not only to save 
them from sin, but from its " wages," which is 
"death." 

All having failed, and men going from under 
the concentrated influences of redeeming mercy 
into a future state, if then the God who has pro- 
vided such a plan of redemption, is to meet them, 
and, rather than have them perish, abandon all 
his terms, and admit them to heaven upon their 
own conditions, rather than see them suffer ; if 
he who became flesh and died for them, will 
then consent that punishment shall try to effect 
that which love and earthly discipline, together, 
failed to accomplish, and punishment proves to 



FUTUEE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 57 

be the power of God and the wisdom of God 
unto salvation, and sinners will therefore have 
more powerful means of grace in hell than under 
the gospel, we, for our part, need another reve- 
lation to inform us of it, and then to explain its 
consistency with our present Bible. 



58 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 



III. 



The fall of angels, and of man, is a con- 
firmatory proof of future, endless retri- 
bution. 

nnHIS will of course have weight only with 
J- those who believe in the existence and fall 
of angels, and in the fall of man. To prove 
either of these here, would be out of place ; and, 
indeed, the necessity of proving them would 
show that everything which has thus far been 
said in this article is superfluous, because it 
takes for granted many things generally be- 
lieved, which rest, however, on the same kind 
of evidence with the existence of angels and 
their fall. The apostles, the scribes and Phari- 
sees, I have not thought it necessary to prove 
had a real existence, and that they were not 
merely personified principles of good and evil. 
If the reader be one who rejects the doctrine of 
fallen angels, and of the fall of man, he will 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 59 

read what is here said merely as showing the 
way in which those who believe these things are 
confirmed, by them, in their belief of endless 
retribution. Peter says, " God spared not the 
angels that sinned, but cast them clown to hell, 
and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be 
reserved unto judgment."* Jude says, "And 
the angels which kept not their first estate, but 
left their own habitation, he hath reserved in 
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judg- 
ment of the great day." f 

If God did not keep angels from falling, we 
are not constrained to think that he will restore 
them. If he will hereafter reinstate them by a 
direct act of power, the same power could have 
kept them from falling, with no greater inter- 
ference with their free agency. If he allowed 
them to fall with a view to some great good in 
their natures, suffering them, in the progress of 
their experience, to ruin this world, and bring in 
such a fearful plague as sin has been to our race, 
all to be compensated for in the great sweep of 
ages by this beneficial knowledge of evil, we are 

* 2 Peter ii. 4. f Jude, 6. 



60 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

led to the conclusion that sin and suffering 
are the necessary means of the greatest good. 
But what manner of Supreme Being have we 
here for a Universalist to love and worship? 
His government, it would seem, cannot proceed 
without suffering a Jiost of angels, falling from 
their thrones in heaven, to pass through centu- 
ries of sin and mischief. This seems neither 
benevolent nor wise. 

In the exercise of their liberty we are told 
that angels kept not their first estate, but left 
their own habitation, and that God hath re- 
served them in everlasting chains under dark- 
ness unto the judgment of the great day. If 
they are finally to be restored, God will restore 
them, or they will come back of themselves. If 
God foresaw that he must finally restore them, 
he would have kept them from falling, unless sin 
and misery are, under his government, the 
means of the greatest good. If so, this may be 
one of the cases in which if a little is good, more 
is better ; and perhaps the best interests of the 
universe will be promoted by protracting this 
sin and suffering indefinitely. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 61 

It is a wholly gratuitous assumption that- 
fallen angels and men will at last, of then own 
accord, repent. Who has travelled so far as to 
know this? What reason have we to think 
that hell will finally convince and persuade 
men? All our present knowledge respecting it 
contradicts this expectation. Satan and his an- 
gels have tried its redeeming power, if it has 
any, for at least six thousand }^ears. We see no 
premises, therefore, on which to base the asser- 
tion that men will at last universally repent. It 
does not appear that being in torment, even, will 
have any better effect, forever, on men, than it 
seems to have had on " the rich man," whose 
only prayer to Abraham was for mitigation of 
pain, and for a warning to be sent to his 
brethren. He seems to think that if one went 
to them from the dead, they would repent. 
Why had he not repented himself, among the 
dead ? Surely the very experience of hell itself 
must be a more powerful means of good than a 
mere apparition. But as suffering had not made 
him penitent, it must be that it has no such 
effect after death. Hell seems a very cruel 



62 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

means of effecting the reformation of sinners, 
when we think that, if employed for this pur- 
pose through such great periods of punishment, 
it will be employed by Him who so easily con- 
verted Saul of Tarsus, and the woman that 
was a sinner, and Zaccheus, and the thief on 
the cross. This is, to my own mind, one of the 
insuperable objections to the theory of future 
disciplinary punishment. I can readily yield my 
assent to the declaration that " he that belie veth 
not the Son shall not see life ; " it does no 
violence to my understanding that those who 
refuse salvation by Christ, when notified that 
their refusal will be fatal, should reap forever 
that which they sowed, and continue hereafter to 
sow that which they reap, and thus without end. 
I read this in the Bible. I have no controversy 
with it. But that a human soul should need 
ages in hell, with Satan and his angels, to be 
made contrite, is as contrary to all analogy as it 
is destitute of scriptural proof. Besides, if God 
does all in this world which he can do without 
destroying free agenc}^, to convert certain men, 
it is difficult to see how the use of superior 



FUTUBE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 63 

power in hell can fail to destroy it utterly. If 
God does not use all proper means here to save 
men, how is he infinitely merciful ? But if here 
he goes to the very boundaries of their free 
agency, which, it is said, he never passes over, 
and yet fails to subdue them, it is gratuitous to 
say that he will certainly succeed any better 
hereafter. 

How much longer than these six thousand 
years past, angels are to suffer, we cannot tell ; 
but the consignment of wicked men at the last 
day to such company as that of " the devil and 
his angels," looks fearfully unlike a remedial 
measure for angel or man. 

The last sentence is utterly inconsistent with 
any expectation, or intention, on the part of 
Christ, that those on whom it is pronounced will 
return. Otherwise, he would not have pro- 
nounced them cursed. Probationers are not 
accursed. They are prisoners of hope. Every- 
thing in the last words of Christ to the wicked 
is as final as language can make it. 

But if the wicked are to be punished until 
they repent, we saj^, punishment thus far has 



64 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

not reformed the original inhabitants of hell. It 
is incumbent on those who advocate final resto- 
ration on this ground, to prove that punishment 
will at last have a restorative power, or they 
must show how long the wicked must sin and 
'suffer to make it wrong to punish them any 
more, even if they continue to sin. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 65 



IV. 



The terms used with regard to the resur- 
rection of the dead, are proofs of endless 
retribution. 

IN the "Child's Catechism," by Rev. O. A. 
Skinner, I find the following : * 

" Q. Will sin exist in the resurrection ? 

" A. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and 
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God ; 
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.f 

"Q. What does the Saviour say respecting 
our condition when raised ? 

" A. Neither can they die any more ; for they 
are equal unto the angels ; and are the children 
of God, being children of the resurrection." J 

Here, it will be seen, it is assumed that Christ 
refers to all the dead, and that all, when they 
are raised, will be the children of God. This, 
it is understood, is the prevailing belief of 
Universalists. 

* Page 24. f 1 Cor. xv. 50. J Mark xii. 25. 

5 



66 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

We read that " no Scripture is of any private 
interpretation; " in other words, that the mean- 
ing must be ascertained by comparing the Scrip- 
tures one with another. The parallel passage in 
Luke reads: "But they that shall be accounted 
worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection 
from the dead, neither marry nor are given in 
marriage ; neither can they die any more, for 
they are equal unto the angels; and are the 
children of God, being the children of the resur- 
rection." * 

Our esteemed friend, Mr. Skinner, it seems 
to me, is led into a mistake by regarding the 
expression, " children of the resurrection," as 
meaning all who have part in the resurrection ; 
and since Jesus declares " the children of the 
resurrection" to be synonymous with "children 
of God," Mr. S. naturally concludes that all who 
rise from the dead will be the children of God. 

Now, allowing, for the sake of the argu- 
ment, that the wicked are raised from the dead 
in their sins, they are not, in the scriptural 
sense, " children of the resurrection." Rising 
from the dead does not make us " children of the 

* Luke xx. 35, 36. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 67 

resurrection." 'Being the offspring of God does 
not make us the " children of God; " the wicked 
would not "come forth to everlasting life," 
though coming forth to live forever. The term 
" children of the resurrection " connects with 
itself the further idea of being qualified for 
heaven, — " counted worthy to obtain that 
world." This is confirmed, it seems to me, be- 
yond all question, by one word of the apostle 
Paul, " I count all things but loss, &c, if by any 
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the 
dead."* If, on being raised from the dead, all 
men are to be fit for heaven, Paul need not have 
used such "means" to "attain" to it, nor, in- 
deed, any "means" whatever; for he was sure 
to be raised, like the rest of mankind. Adopt 
the interpretation just given, viz., that to be 
accounted worthy to obtain the resurrection 
from the dead includes the idea of a distin- 
guishing fitness for heaven, body and soul re- 
united, and we can see why Paul should say he 
was willing to count all things but loss to attain 
unto it, — rising from the dead with his per- 
fected nature, body and soul being, in his view, 

♦Phil. iii. 8-11. 



68 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

the consummation of preparedness, in every 
respect, for heaven. If such be Paul's meaning 
of " attaining unto the resurrection of the dead," 
the wicked, in their sins, though raised from the 
dead, do not attain unto the resurrection, and 
they are not, therefore, in the Saviour's sense, 
" children of the resurrection." 

The Sadducees had said, " Whose wife shall 
she be in the resurrection ? ' : I will paraphrase 
the reply of Christ according to my interpreta- 
tion of his words : " It is, of course, no use for 
me to answer your question on the supposition 
that the woman and her seven husbands are not 
among the saved. They that have done evil 
6 shall come forth,' as I once said, ' to the resur- 
rection of damnation.' Conjugal relationships 
among them, or anything relating to happiness, 
are not supposable. Your inquiry, therefore, 
relates, of course, to those who are supposed to 
be in a condition to admit.of friendly and loving 
relationships. As to them, I say, that being ac- 
counted worthy to obtain that world, and after- 
wards such a resurrection as is worthy of the 
name, they stand in no need of earthly joys, and 
as they die no more, the necessity for repro- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 69 

duction ceases ; they are equal unto the angels, 
and are the children of God, being, in distinction 
from the rest of the risen dead, ' children of the 
resurrection.' " 

The meaning of the phrase is also illustrated 
by the expression, " children of this world." 
Good people are, in one sense, " children of this 
world," equally with the bad; that is, they are 
natives of this world ; and yet we read, " the 
children of this world are wiser in their genera- 
tion than the children of light.'" 

Thus, the good only are " children of the res- 
urrection," though all are raised ; as the wicked 
only are " children of this world," though bad 
and good live here together. 

Paul said before Felix, and declared that the 
Jews " themselves also allow " it (for the Sad- 
ducees were small in number, though high in 
rank and power), "that there shall be a resur- 
rection of the dead, both of the just and unjust" * 

The idea advanced by Mr. Skinner and others, 
that all who are raised from the dead are chil- 
dren of God, grows, therefore, out of his mis- 
take, as I view it, in interpreting the expression, 

* Acts xxiv. 15. 



70 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

" children of the resurrection " to mean all the 
risen dead. Enough has been said in explana- 
tion of the opposite, and, as we believe, the 
more scriptural sense of the phrase. It seems 
to us unaccountable that any should adopt the 
idea that all who are raised from the dead will 
be the children of God, if they have ever read 
the parables of Christ in Matt. xiii. How does 
he there say it shall be in the end of the world ? 
" So shall it be in the end of the world. The 
Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they 
shall gather out of his kingdom all things that 
offend, and them that do iniquity, and shall cast 
them into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing 
and gnashing of teeth." The same words are 
repeated at the close of the parable of the net. 
Surely there will be some of the risen dead who 
will not be " children of the resurrection," be- 
cause they will not be the " children of God." 

I proceed now to the argument to be derived 
from the declarations of Christ in connection 
with the resurrection. Christ said, " The hour 
is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear 
the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear 
shall live." This he said to illustrate his com- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 71 

mission to bestow spiritual life on those who are 
dead in sin. Then he proceeds at once to assert 
a power in confirmation of this, in the way of 
miracle. " Marvel not at this," — (at my power 
to regenerate the soul,) "for the hour is com- 
ing" (notice that he does not here add — "and 
now is " ) " when all that are in their graves 
shall hear his voice and shall come forth, they 
that have done good to the resurrection of life, 
and they that have done evil to the resurrection 
of damnation." 

" All that are in their graves " includes all 
who die, from Abel to the last victim of death 
and the grave. "They that have done evil," of 
course, then, are there. Now, it appears that 
they who have done evil will not have atoned, 
in the intermediate state, for the deeds done in 
the body, because the Saviour says they will 
come forth " to the resurrection of damnation." 
But some of them will have been for a very long 
time in the separate state. Wherever the rich 
man went at death, he was " in torment ; " there 
were men before his day, and there have been 
men since his time, who were as wicked as he. 
But can sin be punished "in torment" so long? 



72 SCRTPTTTRAL ARGUMENT FOR 

Peter tells us that there were "spirits" in his 
day "in prison," to whom Christ preached by 
the Spirit in the days of Noah, — that is at least 
three thousand years before. That is a long 
time for sin to be punished, or even for a sinner 
to be detained, under the government of a good 
God. Now, these are yet to " come forth unto 
the resurrection of damnation." If sin can be 
so punished by the Infinite Father, and if bodies 
are to be added to these souls, notwithstanding 
this already protracted experience of misery, 
and if they, body and soul, are at the last day 
to be doomed to " fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels," on what principles can all this 
be explained? Does sin merit such punishment, 
as the Bible declares has already been inflicted ? 
"Would an earthly parent punish thus?" Is 
there not enough, in this ascertained infliction 
of punishment for sin, to destroy all confidence 
in the government of God, unless sin deserves it 
all? And if it deserves all this, we know not 
how much more it may deserve. 

It will be observed, in addition, that Christ 
does not tell us, they that have done evil, but by 
the power of discipline, shall have repented, shall 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 73 

come forth* to the resurrection of life, and the 
incorrigible to the resurrection of a further dis- 
cipline. How is this ? Has not the long inter- 
val between death and the resurrection resulted 
in the salvation of any ? Strange that some of 
the more hopeful of the wicked should not 
have availed themselves of the opportunity be- 
tween death and the judgment, to confess and 
repent. 

It is contrary to all analogy that it should be 
necessary to punish men so long before they 
repent. On the deck, or in the rigging, of a 
burning vessel at sea, when death is absolutely 
certain, it is to be presumed that it does not 
take a wicked man very long to decide with 
what feelings he will meet his God. When the 
soul, after death, finds itself on the way to hell, 
can we suppose that an opportunity to escape, 
by repentance, if it were offered, would be re- 
jected? If the only object of God is to reclaim 
the sinner, he will release him the first moment 
that he repents. It is so in this world. "And 
when he was yet a great way off, his father saw 
him and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his 
neck, and kissed him." If the soul, at the sight 



74 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

of its punishment, relents and agrees to the 
terms of pardon, does a Universalist believe 
that God will say, " No ; you must suffer in 
hell for your sins, even though you have now 
repented"? Would an earthly father inflict 
punishment in such a case ? But the Bible 
represents the wicked to have been in hell from 
the time of their death till the resurrection, and 
at the resurrection they must yet come forth "to 
the resurrection of damnation." It is incredible 
that so much time and so much suffering should 
be necessary to make sinners repent. Either 
they repent, and God still continues to punish 
them " ages on ages ; " or they do not repent 
between death and the resurrection, nor at the 
judgment-seat of Christ, nor in the immediate 
prospect of going away to the society and the 
punishment of the devil and his angels. If a 
soul which is finally to be reclaimed, can pass 
through such experience and not repent, it re- 
quires larger hope and faith than is common to 
men to expect that future punishment can be a 
means of salvation. 

That the guilt of a finite creature, man or 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 75 

angel, should merit thousands of years in hell, 
or that thousands of years should be requisite to 
bring him to his right mind, no more accords 
with our natural feelings, nor with what we call 
"reason," than does the idea of endless punish- 
ment. But if the Bible conveys anything intel- 
ligibly to our understanding, it teaches that an- 
gels and men have been subjected to punishment 
for a longer period than is "reasonable "for mere 
discipline. 

Surely, the end of future punishment cannot 
be merely the recovery of the sinner. Were it 
so, moreover, it would follow that sin injures no 
one but the sinner himself. It violates no duties 
towards God, no interests of fellow-creatures. 
But the law of God refutes this; the threat- 
enings against those who cause others to fall, 
and the frequent punishment of men who made 
others to sin, prove that the punishment of the 
sinner will have some other end than his refor- 
mation. 

It being frequently argued that the sins of 
a finite creature cannot be punished forever, 
because a finite creature cannot merit infinite 



76 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

punishment, it will be enough to meet this, in 
passing, with a single remark, viz. : That, if this 
be so, then, even if the whole universe should sin 
forever, the whole universe cannot be punished 
forever, because the whole universe, after all, is 
but finite. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 77 



V. 



The Scriptures teach that the law of God has 
a curse: — which it has not, if future pun- 
ishment be disciplinary. 

THE punishment, however long and severe, 
which shall result in restoring a soul to 
holiness and an endless heaven, under the 
kind and faithful administration of its heavenly 
Father, it would be unsuitable to call "a curse." 
The theory of Restorationists is, that mercy, 
having failed to recover sinners in this world, 
will go on hereafter, in the same direction, 
with more vigorous methods, till it succeeds, — 
the same undying, unfaltering love pursuing the 
wanderer, which here never ceased to plead. 
Hereafter it will mingle stronger ingredients, and 
cure the disease of sin. What " curse " there 
is in such loving-kindness, it is hard to see. In 
this world we experience just this treatment: 

"Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes; 
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in ; " 



78 SCEIPTUEAL ARGUMENT FOR 

and sometimes all the waves and billows go 
over us. Men are stripped of property, family, 
health, reputation, and finally they turn to the 
hand that smites them, grateful that God did not 
spare the rod for their crying; and they testify 
that through the loss of all things they have 
gained eternal bliss. Do they call their afflic- 
tions their " curse " ? Have they suffered "the 
curse of the law " ? All the ordinary medicines 
having failed, the physician brings some extreme 
remedy and saves the patient. Was that a 
"curse"? He amputates the limb, and thus 
prolongs a precious life. Did he "curse "the 
man in doing so ? We must, therefore, expunge 
large parts of the Bible if future punishment be 
only a wholesome discipline. " Christ has re- 
deemed us from the curse of the law, being made 
a curse for us." No; he has only redeemed -us 
from a further dispensation of infinite mercy, if 
punishment be only for discipline ; indeed, he 
prevents the bestowment of a greater proof of 
love than he himself gave us in dying on the 
cross ; for if, after all his love for us, he will 
persist in disciplining us in hell, willing to see 
us suffer that he may finally save us, " herein is 



FUTUBE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 79 

love." The cross is not the climax of his love, 
but the lake of fire. How it is in any sense a 
curse, we fail to see. Christians here never look 
upon the means of sanctification as " the curse 
of the law." The sinner who by the severest 
discipline is brought to Christ, feels that he 
thereby escapes " the curse of the law." But 
we cannot find that curse, neither here nor here- 
after, unless there be punishment which is not 
intended for the recovery of the sinner. 



80 SCRIPTUKAL AKGUMENT FOB 



VI. 

The Sentence passed upon the wicked indis- 
criminately, forbids the idea of discipline in 
future punishment. 

AMONG the impenitent at death and in 
eternity there is, of course, great variety 
of character. If the object of future punish- 
ment be to reclaim them, the wise and consid- 
erate methods of earthly discipline seem to be 
utterly discarded after death. We hardly need 
to be reminded how indiscriminate are the 
threatenings which are said to be inflicted on 
the wicked. The last sentence evidently re- 
gards none of them as probationers ; there is no 
forbearance in it towards the more hopeful ; 
they are all addressed as "ye cursed." We are 
considering the testimony of the Scriptures. 
What evidence do they afford of any discrimi- 
nation in the treatment of the finally impenitent, 
notwithstanding the vast variety which must 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 81 

exist among them? I answer, Not any. But 
the following passages, among others, teach 
plainly that the doom of the wicked will be 
indiscriminate, without regard to hopeful diver- 
sities of character. 

" And I saw the dead, small and great, stand 
before God, and the books were opened, and 
another book was opened, which is the book 
of life ; and the dead were judged out of the 
things which were written in the book, accord- 
ing to their works. And the sea gave up the 
dead which were in it, and death and hell de- 
livered up the dead which were in them ; and 
they were judged every man according to their 
works." Then follows this declaration : " And 
death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. 
This is the second death." Some say, death and 
hell are annihilated. But this is not the idea 
intended, unless the wicked also are then to be 
annihilated ; for the next verse, concluding the 
subject, says, "And whosoever was not found 
written in the book of life was cast into the 
lake of fire." The obvious meaning is, Death 
and hell, whatever they represent, will then be 
added to the lake of fire, whatever that is, as 
6 



82 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

new ingredients, and to constitute " the second 
death," and as a final gathering together of all 
the elements of sorrow and pain, with all the 
wicked, into one place. With this passage agree 
the words of Daniel : " And many of them that 
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some 
to everlasting life, and some to shame and 
everlasting contempt." The parables of Christ 
relating to the end of the world recognize only 
two great divisions of men at the last day. 
Wheat and tares only are to be in the "field;" 
good and bad only, in the "net." The wheat is 
saved, the tares are burned; "the good" in the 
net are gathered into vessels ; " the bad " are 
none of them dismissed for amendment, or 
growth, but are "cast away." And Christ tells 
us that every human being will stand at his 
right hand, or left hand, "blessed," or "cursed." 
Now, when we call to mind the justice of 
God, and reflect that undue severity, or the 
laying on man more than is meet, would alienate 
the confidence of the good from the Most High, 
and when we consider the declaration of Christ, 
that sins of ignorance shall receive but " few 
stripes," and we still perceive that the human 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 83 

race are evidently to fall at last into two di- 
visions, which, will include the whole, with their 
countless diversities and degrees as to character 
in each division, we infer that no provision is 
made for a more hopeful class to enjoy a further 
trial. All upon the left hand are doomed alike. 
If there is to be a new probation after death, the 
Bible surely does not teach it. 



84 SCEIPTTJEAL AEGUMENT FOE 



VII. 

The duration of future punishment is expressed 
in the New Testament by the terms employed 
to denote absolute eternity. 

THERE is, we all admit, such a thing as 
forever. If the Bible speaks of the natural 
attributes of God, his eternity is of course 
brought to view, and there must be a term, or 
terms, to convey the idea. 

Now it is apparent to all, that the words 
eternal, everlasting, forever, never of themselves 
signify a limited duration. No one ever learns 
from these words that the duration to which 
they refer is less than infinite. The idea of 
limitation, if it be obtained, always is derived 
from the context. 

It is moreover true, beyond the possibility of 
dispute, that the words eternal, everlasting, and 
forever, alwaj^s mean the whole of something. 
There is no instance in which they are used to 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 85 

denote a part of a thing's duration. It is always 
the entire period for which that thing is to last. 
This no one will call in question. 

It is well understood that the words " for- 
ever," and " everlasting," are used to express 
a duration commensurate with the nature of the 
thing spoken of. " Everlasting mountains " are 
coeval with creation, and are to endure as Ions: 
as the earth. " A servant forever" is a servant 
for life. We cannot take the sense which the 
word has in connection with a certain thing, and 
by it prove or disprove anything relating to a 
totally different thing. We cannot prove, for 
example, that mountains will not last to the end 
of time, because forever, applied to a servant, 
means only for life. We must consider the 
nature of the object to which the word is ap- 
plied. When it is applied to the Most High, 
of- course it means unlimited duration. Now the 
words which convey the idea of absolute eternity 
are applied, for example, to mountains, and to 
future punishment, and to the being and govern- 
ment of God. This, then, is certain : Because 
forever, when applied to some things, does not 
mean absolute eternity, it does not follow that it 



86 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOE 

does not mean eternity when applied to future 
retribution. If it were so, we could not convey 
the idea of the eternity of God ; for it could be 
said that forever is sometimes applied to a limited 
duration. That is true ; now if this proves that 
future punishment is not forever, it must also 
prove that the being of God is not forever. 

Two things are beyond dispute : 1. Forever 
and everlasting are applied to future retribu- 
tions. 2. These terms always mean the ivhole, 
as to duration, of that with which they stand 
connected. If applied to life, it is the whole of 
life ; if to the existence of the world, it is the 
entire period of its existence ; if to a covenant, 
the covenant is either without limit as to time, 
or it is the whole of the duration which the 
subject permits ; and when applied to Jehovah, 
it refers to his whole eternity. 

What, then, does it mean, when applied to fu- 
ture retribution ? It always means the whole of 
something. Is it the whole of future existence ? 
No one can base a denial of it on the ground 
that the word, when applied to human life, 
means only a few years, or a limited duration 
when applied to the earth. For, how is it when 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 87 

applied to God and the happiness of heaven? 
It is certainly the place of any who deny endless 
retributions, to show that the words cannot 
mean the whole of future existence when applied 
to punishment. The words mean the whole of 
future existence when applied, by the use of the 
same Greek words in the same passages, to the 
happiness of the righteous. The objector must 
show that when applied to the future life, they 
mean only a part of it, notwithstanding they 
always mean the whole of everything else with 
which they stand connected. 

Such are some of the considerations, drawn 
from the word of God, which satisfy my own 
mind that retributions after death are without 
end. Mr. Foster speaks of it as " the general, 
not very far short of universal, judgment of 
divines." Such multitudes of the best of men 
and women are still firmly persuaded of its 
truth, that we are led to say, there must be a 
foundation for it in the word of God, — and for 
this reason : If mankind could have divested 
themselves of the conviction that it is not found 
in the word of God, it is reasonable to think 



88 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

that it would long since have been discarded. 
Nay, rather, who would have invented such a 
• doctrine? Good men would not have palmed it 
upon the world, for more reasons than one. Be- 
sides, many an error has been exploded ; it is 
unaccountable, if this be error, that it should 
have kept its hold upon the human mind. ~No 
Protestant, it would seem, would quote a belief 
in purgatory as a parallel case. We have no 
coercion, nor any kind of motive to bias our 
minds towards this article of faith. We use no 
terms on this subject, — certainly we approve of 
none, which are not derived from the Bible. 
We are not superstitious, nor fanatical, nor 
priest-ridden, nor cruel ; and we think we have 
far more exalted reasons for believing in the in- 
finite love of God than any have who do not see 
it, as we do, in the atoning cross. However 
good and amiable the opposers of this doctrine 
may be, they will not assume that they are more 
humane, more pitiful, more gentle, more the 
friends of God and man, than those who believe 
it. In view of the hold which it has on the 
minds of men, it would be so great a marvel 
that the doctrine should not be found in the 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 89 

Scriptures, that nothing could be more astound- 
ing, not even the fearful truth itself. 

And that it may be seen, further, how we are 
confirmed in our persuasion that we read the 
Bible aright, I refer not only, as above, to the 
convictions of believers that the doctrine is 
scriptural, but to the positive statements of 
some who have rejected it. 

Mr. Foster tells us: "And the language of 
Scripture is formidably strong, — so strong that 
it must be an argument of extreme cogency that 
would authorize a limited interpretation." 

Dr. Thomas Burnett, an English divine, writ- 
ing in favor of final restoration, says : " Human 
nature revolts from the very name of future 
punishment. But the sacred Scriptures seem to 
be on the other side." * 

One effect of the recent discussion of this sub- 
ject in this city has been to elicit from a distin- 
guished advocate of final restoration, the fol- 
lowing statement: 

" And yet I freely say that I do not find the 
doctrine of the ultimate salvation of all souls 

* " Natura humana abhorret ab ipso nomine pcenarum 
aeternarum. At Scriptura sacra a partibus contrariis stare 
videtur." — Be Statu Mort. et Resurg., p. 228, 2d ed. 



90 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

clearly stated in any text or in any discourse 
that has ever been reported from the lips of 
Christ. I do not think that we can fairly main- 
tain that the final restoration of all men is a 
prominent and explicit doctrine of the four gos- 
pels." * 

To this, I am able to add the explicit testi- 
mony of Rev. Theodore Parker. Wishing to 
verify a quotation which a friend had tried in 
vain to find for me in one of Mr. Parker's vol- 
umes, I addressed a note to Mr. Parker, asking 
him to give me the reference. The following 
polite and obliging answer will speak for itself. 
All the italics are Mr. Parker's. 

" Boston, Dec. 1, 1858. 

"Rev. Dr. Adams. 

" Dear Sir : I am ill now, and cannot recol- 
lect that the passage you refer to occurs in any 
of my volumes ; yet it might, in several. I am 
sure it does in some printed sermons — pam- 
phlets, but cannot now say which. I will try to 
find the passage. 

" To me it is quite clear that Jesus taught the 
doctrine of eternal damnation, if the Evangelists 
— the first three, I mean — are to be treated as 

* Rev. T. S. King's Two Discourses, p. 5. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 91 

inspired. I can understand his language in no 
other way. But as the Protestant sects start 
with the notion — which to me is a monstrous 
one — that the words of the New Testament are 
all miraculously inspired by God, and so infal- 
libly true ; and as this doctrine of eternal dam- 
nation is so revolting to all the humane and moral 
feelings of our nature, men said ' the words must 
be interpreted in another way.' So as the Uni- 
tarians have misinterpreted the New Testament 
to prove that the Christos of the fourth gospel 
had no preexistence, the Universalists misinter- 
preted other passages of the gospels to ' show 
that Jesus of Nazareth never taught eternal dam- 
nation. So the geologists misinterpret Genesis 
to-day — to save the divine infallible character 
of the text. 

Yours truly, 

" Theodore Parker." 

It was but fair to let Mr. Parker state his 
whole belief on this subject. Thus, in his view, 
if the Evangelists are to be believed, Christ 
taught that future retributions are to be endless. 

There is nothing to be surprised at in this ; 
but it will be seen that it is not without good 
reason that those who receive the Bible impli- 
citly as the word of God, have so generally 



92 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

believed in endless retribution as a doctrine of 
Scripture. 

The question then arises, whether our hu- 
man instincts, or divine revelations, whether 
man the sinner, or God the sovereign, shall dic- 
tate the penalty of sin? Mr. Foster, seeking 
relief to his mind from the terrible idea of endless 
sin and misery, says of the doctrine of the an- 
nihilation of the wicked, " It would be a pro- 
digious relief." Some one respectfully replies 
to him that " the divine government is not for 
the relief of the imagination, but for the relief 
of the universe." 

The question is often asked, How, allowing 
endless retribution to be a scriptural doctrine, 
can you have peace of mind in your belief? 

I answer, We believe that no one will perish 
who does not reject the Saviour of the world ; 
or, if he be a heathen, does not sin against light 
and conviction sufficient to save him. 

It has an effect to quiet our minds when we 
reflect that our thoughts and feelings at the loss 
of the soul were surpassed in Him whose soul 
for us was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. 
Tears were shed by him over sinners — "God 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 93 

hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." If the 
thought of endless retribution is so terrible to 
us who know so little about it, we are con- 
strained to think that there was never any sor- 
row like unto the sorrow of him, who loved us 
and gave himself for us, when he sees that he 
must, nevertheless, pronounce upon any for 
whom he died, the sentence of that everlasting 
punishment from which he became incarnate, 
and died to save us. Great as our astonishment 
and sorrow are, we cannot forget that they are 
infinitely less than his. If, through grace, we 
are saved, we look to him, who knows what his 
own tears have been, to wipe away all tears from 
our eyes. 

We also consider that the basis of future pun- 
ishment is a chosen and cherished state of mind, 
which leads men here to reject Christ, notwith- 
standing his known character and his efforts for 
them. This may lead them still to reject him ; 
for, as already stated, we do not find that even 
the loss of heaven and the experience of chains 
under darkness, have reconciled lost angels to 
God. While they choose to sin, therefore, we 



94 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

see no injustice in their being punished, even if 
they sin forever. 

That the Bible contains fore warnings and in- 
structions which ought to be sufficient to deter 
men from future misery, we learn even from 
the reply of Abraham to the rich man in hell. 
The rich man desired that Lazarus might be sent 
to his father's house with testimony concerning 
that " place of torment." Abraham replied that 
" they have Moses and the prophets, let them 
hear them/' The rich man could have easily 
reminded Abraham, if truth permitted, that 
there is nothing about that place in the Old 
Testament. He makes no such answer, but 
pleads the supposed efficacy of a visitor from the 
unseen world. Abraham replied, that such a 
visitor could have no effect on those who do not 
believe the testimony of the Old Testament orF 
that subject. All this is from the lips of Jesus 
Christ. 

Inasmuch as we cast no blame on God for the 
present condition and conduct of cannibals, and 
pagans, and atheists, and blasphemers, and slave- 
traders, and every other description of wicked 
men, (neither do they themselves impute blame 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 95 

to him,) we do not feel that God will be re- 
sponsible for the endless wickedness and misery 
of sinners ; nor will they charge him with 
injustice more than they now do. 

We believe that the God of the New Testa- 
ment is the same unchangeable God of the 
Old Testament; that Christ has not modified 
the divine character, nor altered one principle 
of the divine administration ; but that the New 
Testament reveals the mercy of God in full- 
orbed beauty, though its outlines were always 
visible from the beginning ; that all which was 
terrible in the God who destroyed the old world, 
and Sodom and Gomorrha, and cast down rebel 
angels from heaven to hell, is still the same, 
and that when mercy has failed under the New 
Testament to recover sinners, the God of the 
Old Testament and of the New will be their 
Judge and King. We read that " it is a fearful 
thing to fall into the hands of the living God." 
" For our God is a consuming fire." And we 
have our choice, to love and serve such a God as 
this, or to reject him and take the consequences. 
Our private experience persuades us that He is 
good. He has always been just and kind, gentle, 



96 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

easy to be entreated. In all our afflictions he was 
afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved us. 
Knowing this, his stern, uncompromising hatred 
of sin, his power to inflict suffering and to look 
upon it forever, if necessary, give us confidence 
in Him. We may need such attributes for the 
foundation of our safety and of our confidence 
in God, as much as that attribute which we now 
separate from the rest of his character and call 
his love. 

We believe that the Bible teaches — for 
surely it follows of course from all which has 
now been adduced — that some proportion of 
pain and misery will forever exist under the 
government of God. The idea that they are 
to be wholly expurgated is contradicted by the 
Scriptures, and is mere fancy. But the scale 
of things being hereafter enlarged to our ap- 
prehension, and the reasons for one thing and 
another which are now but partially explained, 
being more fully apparent, we think we see in 
the present feelings of good citizens with regard 
to law, and punishments, and the officers of 
justice, how future pain and misery, in their 
relation to the infinitely blessed system of gov- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 97 

ernment over a universe of free agents, will 
by no means diminish the happiness of that 
multitude of obedient souls which no man can 
number. 

I have always been struck by the consid- 
eration, that the passages from which Univer- 
salists infer the final happiness of all men, do 
not occur in the Bible in connection with the 
punishment of the wicked. This is of the ut- 
most importance. It is one presumptive proof 
that, occurring as they do apart from any men- 
tion of the punishment of the wicked, they 
belong to other subjects. And so we find them, 
in connection with the blessedness of the right- 
eous, the ultimate victories of Christ over his 
enemies, his final reign, and the happiness of 
heaven. But we look in vain for passages where 
promises, prophecies, hints of ultimate resto- 
ration, occur in connection with the subject of 
future punishment. It will not be disputed that 
there are passages which seem to teach future 
endless punishment ; and the attempt is to show 
that they are " metaphorical." But some ap- 
pear to think that metaphorical means fictitious, 
7 



98 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

unreal; on the contrary, " metaphorical " lan- 
guage is generally the stronger way of asserting 
anything, being resorted to for the purpose of 
intensifying the expression. But how remark- 
able it is that we find no clause nor phrase, 
neither literal, nor " metaphorical," limiting the 
main drift of a passage which speaks of future 
endless punishment, or suggesting the idea of 
restoration. The bold, terrific language of Scrip- 
ture, asserting the future punishment of the 
wicked, has not one word of qualification. 

We frequently meet with such representations 
and illustrations as the following, in modern 
writers, — from whom I had intended to quote 
several passages ; but the following statement 
of their views will suffice: — The soul is God's 
child. Will a good mother ever cast away her 
offspring? No; neither will the great "Mother 
of us all," — the love of God. The worst of 
men — the Judases, the Neros, and Caligulas — 
will at last fulfil their career of sin and sorrow, 
and return to the bosom of God. As the earth 
in some parts of its orbit drives away from the 
sun, but soon comes " rounding back again," so 
every creature that God ever made, Satan and 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 99 

all (if there be any Satan), will at last accom- 
plish its terrible career, and, passing its solstice, 
rejoice in a new moral existence. 

The brief reply to all such fancies is this: 
Have we a Bible ? Does it give us any intima- 
tion of such a revolution, such an orbit, for the 
lost soul? We read of "wandering stars, to 
whom is reserved the mist of darkness forever 
and ever ; " but where does the Bible, in speak- 
ing of the spirit launching forth on its aphelion, 
intimate that its path is a cycle, and not a 
straight line? 

We see one part of the race u go away into 
everlasting punishment." But this is said to be 
merely " a metaphor." We will be grateful 
even for " a metaphor," if there be any, repre- 
senting their return. 

We have lately been furnished, from high 
authority in the Universalist denomination, with 
some of the principal proof texts in the dis- 
courses of Christ in favor of the salvation of 
all men. They occur in the review already 
spoken of, (in the preface to this article,) writ- 
ten by Rev. Dr. Thomas Whittemore, in which 



100 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

he endeavors to answer Rev. T. S. King's asser- 
tion, that he could not find any text or discourse 
of Christ which contains the doctrine of the 
final happiness of all men. Dr. Whittemore, of 
course, would here bring forth some of his 
strong proofs, for he says of Mr. King's dis- 
course: "We think they will do as much to 
break down Universalism as to break down the 
doctrine of endless misery." The following are 
Dr. Whittemore's quotations from the words of 
Christ, to prove that he taught the final sal- 
vation of all men. 

1. " This is indeed the Christ, the Saviour 
of the world." * Dr. Whittemore gives an ex- 
tended exposition of the discourse of Christ at 
the well of Samaria, which gave occasion to 
these words of the Samaritans ; and he says : 
" Jesus Christ, let it be remembered, is declared 
to be the Saviour of the world; and how could 
he be justly called the Saviour of the world if 
the world shall never be saved ? " f 

2. " All things are delivered unto me of my 
Father." This is a major premise. "All that 
the Father hath given me shall come to me," is 

* John iv. 42. f p. 390. 



FTTTTJKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 101 

the minor premise. " To come to Christ is to 
become a Christian."* This involves the ergo 
of the proposition. He acids, " We have by no 
means exhausted our proof;"! anc ^- ne gives us, 

3. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
will draw all men unto me." We have the word 
of Christ for it, — "will draw all men unto me." % 

4. " Jesus answered, Ye do err, not knowing 
the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in 
the resurrection, they neither marry nor are 
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God 
in heaven." " If angels are holy, mankind are 
to be holy ; if angels are to be happy, mankind 
are to be happy." " This is a distinct and posi- 
tive declaration of the purity and happiness of 
all men." " How, then," Dr. W. says, " can 
we adopt the language of Mr. King, and say, 
4 1 do not find the doctrine,' &c. Strange de- 
claration ! Jesus joined two great facts together, 
the resurrection of all men, and their exaltation 
to the condition of angels." § 

Such passages are, in the opinion of Dr. Whit- 
temore, a plain, obvious refutation, from Christ 
himself, of that, in Dr. Whittemore's view, dan- 

* p. 391. f p. 392. % p. 395. § p. 395. 



102 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

gerous assertion by Mr. King, viz., " the ultimate 
salvation of all souls is not clearly taught in any 
text or discourse in the gospels." 

The principal topics which have now been 
considered are these : 

The Scriptures reveal a future state of reward 
and punishment. 

They teach that the body and soul will be 
joined in future happiness and misery. 

Christ teaches that God can destroy both body 
and soul in hell. If God cannot morally do this, 
the declaration is unintelligible ; it answers no 
purpose of instruction. 

Future punishment will therefore be a natural 
operation of moral laws, sustained and made 
effectual by the hand of God upon the sinner, 
who, by his state of depravity, will be made sus- 
ceptible to misery forever. 

The essential elements of misery remain in 
the wicked after death. 

Redemption by Christ is represented as having 
for its object salvation from final perdition. 

The work of the Holy Spirit as a part of re- 
demption, and the unpardonable sin against Him, 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 103 

prove that the present is the final effort to save 
men. 

None of the passages relied on to prove final 
restoration occur in connection with the subject 
of future punishment, but with the reign of 
Christ, and the happiness of the righteous. 

No passage in the Bible discloses the future 
repentance of the wicked. 

Promises of restoration, made to sinners who 
in this world were to become penitent, always 
occur in connection with threatenings and doom. 
No such promises are made in connection with 
the threatenings of future punishment, or with 
the final doom of the wicked. 

The Bible closes with an express declaration 
of the future unchangeableness of character. 

There are no prophetic visions in the New 
Testament which contemplate deliverance from 
hell, and corresponding to visions of God's 
ancient people in captivity, and of their release 
and restoration. 

The fall of angels, and of men, is a confirma- 
tory argument in favor of future punishment, 
seeing that if God did not keep them from fall- 
ing, he can consistently refuse to restore them. 



104 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

The terms used with regard to the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, show that the wicked will have 
experienced no change since death, but will come 
forth from their graves to the resurrection of 
damnation. 

If the wicked are punished hereafter merely 
for their own good, there is no such thing as sin 
against God or our neighbor; — which is con- 
trary to Scripture. 

The law of God has no curse if future pun- 
ishment be in all cases disciplinary. 

The sentence passed upon the impenitent in- 
discriminately, forbids the idea of discipline in 
future punishment. 

It is inconceivable that fallen angels and " the 
spirits in prison," w T ho were on earth "in the 
days of Noah," should not long ago have re- 
pented of their sins, if repentance were the ob- 
ject sought by their punishment. 

If death, and the scenes within the veil pre- 
vious to the judgment-day, do not effect the 
repentance in the wicked, there is no ground to 
think that their banishment from Christ with the 
fallen angels, at the last day, is intended for 
their reformation, or would effect it. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 105 

" Forever " and " everlasting " always denote 
the whole, as to duration, of that with which 
they stand connected, 

If a finite being cannot justly be punished 
forever, then, if the whole universe should sin 
forever, it could not be punished forever, because 
the whole intelligent universe also is finite. 

The duration of future punishment is ex- 
pressed in the New Testament by the terms em- 
ployed to denote absolute eternity in cases which 
are never questioned. 

The provision made in the incarnation, suf- 
ferings, and death of the Son of God for pardon 
and salvation, and the abundant calls to repent- 
ance, and offers of eternal life, through Christ, 
to all, will make the final impenitence of sinners 
inexcusable, and their misery will be of their 
own procuring. 

I may be allowed, in closing, to quote the 
words of the apostle Paul, which those who 
preach and are set for the defence of the gospel, 
must not hesitate to adopt : " For we are unto 
God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are 
saved and in them that perish : To the one we 



106 SCRIPTURAL ARGUMENT FOR 

are the savor of death unto death, and to the 
other, the savor of life unto life. And who is 
sufficient for these things?"* 

Pursuing my ordinary labors, a Universalist 
and Unitarian clergyman of this city invited me 
to repeat, in his pulpit, a sermon on this subject, 
to which he had listened in my church. As I 
profess not to be ashamed of the Gospel of 
Christ, which, in my view, involves the doctrine 
of endless punishment, I complied with his re- 
quest. This has led to the present communica- 
tion. Had mere controversy been my object, I 
would not have sought to discuss the scriptural 
view of this subject, with such admissions before 
me as those of Rev. T. S. King and Rev. Theo- 
dore Parker. When I read them, I thought that 
one whose only object was to get the advantage 
of an opponent, might he justified in feeling 
with regard to the doctrine of Restoration, as 
Joab did when he found Absalom in the tree, 
and he blew a trumpet, and all the people re- 
turned from the battle. Such men as Mr. King 
and Mr. Parker, seeing the doctrine of endless 
punishment in the literal speech of the Bible, as 

* 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 107 

interpreted by us, and rejecting its inspiration, 
partly because they find it there, relieves^ us 
greatly from the need of holding controversies 
on this subject. Controversy has not been my 
motive. I have sought to persuade my reader 
to flee with me for refuge to lay hold upon the 
hope set before us. 

In the foregoing discussion, I am not aware 
that there is anything which intentionally re- 
flects upon the understanding or motives of 
others. It has cost no effort to abstain from 
being, in any way, derisory, or satirical, or con- 
temptuous. Conscious only of kindness and 
good-will to all, and grateful for this opportunity 
to state and defend important principles, I am, 
The reader's friend and servant, 

N. Adams. 



REASONABLENESS 

OF 

FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

109 



C0KEESP03STDENCE. 



12 Burroughs Place. 
Eev. Dr. Adams. 

Dear Sir : It was my privilege to be one of your audi- 
tors last Sunday evening, when you delivered the discourse, 
listened to with great interest by a large assembly, on the 
"Eeasonableness of Eternal Punishment.'' 

I take the liberty to address you, with the request that 
you will repeat the discourse in the Hollis Street Church 
next Sunday evening. Members of the committee of my 
society, and many others of the parishioners, express to 
me the hope that you may find it consistent with your en- 
gagements and in accordance with your sense of duty to 
accept this invitation. Our church is very spacious ; on such 
an occasion I doubt not that it would be crowded with an 
audience of " Liberal Christians." I am sure that they would 
eagerly embrace an opportunity to hear so able an advocate 
of " Orthodoxy" upon a theme so important as the eternal 
punishment, by the Infinite Father, of all who fail to comply 
with the terms of grace which He has established for His 
children during this brief life. 

Let me assure you that, if you accept this offer, the pulpit 
shall be entirely at your disposal, precisely as if it were your 
own. And let me say that I expect no such offer in return. 
If you consent, I shall simply urge my people to attend your 
service, and listen, as I shall listen a second time, with the 
respect your abilities deserve, and with the earnestness which 

111 



112 CORRESPONDENCE. 

the momentous question, you discuss — about which we differ 
so widely — should inspire in us all. 

In the hope of an early reply, I am respectfully yours, 

T. S. KING. 



Rev. T. S. King. 4 Boylston Place. 

My Dear Sir : Your note of the 21st inst. reached me this 
morning, and I need not say that it has greatly surprised 
and deeply interested me. The sermon was written in 1852, 
and was then preached to my own people on a Sabbath morn- 
ing, in the ordinary course of ministerial labor. The subject 
has weighed much on my own mind during the present re- 
ligious interest, and this alone induced me to present it at 
my lecture last Sabbath evening. That it did not strike 
you and others as an unfeeling exhibition of mere theological 
opinion upon an infinitely important and very trying subject, 
is truly gratifying to me. 

Your invitation to repeat the sermon in your church, next 
Sabbath evening, is conveyed in such terms that I feel im- 
pelled to accept it, and I will therefore comply with your 
request. It is due to you as well as to myself to say, that 
parts of the discourse, as originally written, were omitted last 
Sabbath evening, and their place was supplied from brief 
notes, and by a few extemporaneous remarks. All this I will 
endeavor to repeat ; and I infer from the tenor of your note 
that should I further explain and re-enforce some of my state- 
ments, it will but accord with your wishes. I ought, more- 
over, to add that none but myself can properly be held re- 
sponsible for my sentiments and expressions on this subject, 
however much I may suppose my views to agree with theirs. 

With sincere regard, I am, dear sir, very truly yours, 

N. ADAMS. 



REASONABLENESS 

OF 

FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 



For the wages of sin is death. — Rom. vi. 23. 

LET us endeavor to think how it would be 
with us, should it come to pass, as the fool 
in his heart wishes it to be, that there is no 
God ; that God is dethroned. Some disaster 
has happened in the universe, and rival spirits, 
we will suppose, have triumphed. Malignity 
has supplanted benevolence ; wickedness is en- 
throned over virtue ; chance does not rule, but 
the government of all worlds is in the hands 
of the enemies of God. Prayer now is useless ; 
public worship may as well cease. Bibles are 
like old books of history, and nothing more, for 
the promises of the Bible are now like irre- 
8 113 



114 REASONABLENESS OF 

deemable bills. Kepentance and faith are use- 
less. The deity to whom this world has fallen 
by lot is Mammon, or Moloch ; or it may be that 
Satan himself, out of spite for all which he has 
suffered here, takes it under his charge. Every- 
thing now is perverted ; darkness is put for 
light, evil for good, bitter for sweet. The 
strongest must rule ; to get all he can, by all 
means, is the governing principle of every man; 
no rights are respected ; Virtue is driven out of 
the world; her defences and her great reward 
have perished. Everywhere we are assailed 
with the sight of these words, and with this cry : 
No God ! No God ! Whether the devils have 
power to control the elements and rule the 
heavenly bodies, or whether all things will rush 
to ruin, is a fearful question, which every day 
and hour appalls the stoutest heart. For, 
instead of One, Almighty, Supreme Being, who 
can say, as formerly, " I am God, and there is 
none else," and instead of that unity of purpose, 
and independent will, and unrivalled might, 
which governed the universe safely and happily, 
a band of devils, we suppose, is at the head of 
affairs, the superior demon holding his sway by 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 115 

force over the rest, or by their assent; but no 
unity of purpose, or permanence, can be ex- 
pected in things controlled by hateful and hating 
creatures. We look up to the heavens ; they no 
longer " declare the glory of God," but telegraph 
his discomfiture. As one says : 

"What were the universe without a God? 
A mob of worlds, careering round the sky." 

Law everywhere would be likely to be mob law. 
If we could, by armies and any sacrifice of 
treasure and blood, reinstate Jehovah in his 
throne, our own self-interest, and sense of jus- 
tice, and outraged feelings, would impel us to 
any and every effort to drive Satan and his hosts 
from heaven, and shut them up in hell as long as 
the} r should continue rebellious ; and the return 
of the day when God Almighty should resume 
his peaceful reign in the armies of heaven, and 
among the inhabitants of the earth, would be 
a jubilee. But, alas ! if the almighty arm, so 
called, could not prevail against his enemies, 
how could mortals help him ? Let it once be 
that usurpers have the throne of God, and anni- 
hilation would be coveted by every one of us 



116 REASONABLENESS OF 

more eagerly than any despairing suicide ever 
yet longed to prove or to find it true. 

Every one of us has done his part to bring 
about this state of things. Should the natural 
feelings and conduct of each of us be extended 
indefinitely, all this would virtually happen. 
There might be more refinement in wickedness 
in some places than in others, to suit the tastes 
and habits of different people ; but Greece and 
Rome, the models of ancient cultivation and 
refinement, are, with "the whole world lying in 
wickedness," described by an unerring pen in 
the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 
and in terms which make every reader blush 
with shame at human nature. Its degeneracy 
and corruption, from Cain to the days of the 
Canaanites, and ever since, when unrestrained 
by the grace of God, have been such that nation 
after nation made it necessary for God to wipe 
them out of existence, " as a man wipeth a dish, 
wiping it and turning it upside down."* Volney 
surveys the " ruins of empires," and mourns, 
saying, " To what purpose is this waste ?" and 
he impeaches the wisdom of his God. He will 

* 2 Kings xxi. 13. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 117 

not consider that sin is the procuring cause of 
national, as it is of individual ruin, and that God 
has but fulfilled the threatening, " The nation 
and kingdom that will not serve thee shall 
perish ; yea, those nations shall be utterly- 
wasted. " * " Thou shalt dash them in pieces 
like a potter's vessel.'' f 

Sin is the antagonist of God. If sin prevails, 
there is " no God." For wherever, even upon a 
small scale, sin prevails, God is banished. Let 
its power be supreme, and practically there is no 
God. 

Where is sin ? Who ever saw it ? Where is 
its habitation? Sin exists nowhere but in free, 
intelligent creatures. There is no sin separate 
from a sinner. Whoever, therefore, is a sinner, 
is sin impersonated. In the greatest measure, 
we suppose, sin exists in Satan ; then in his com- 
panions ; then in lost men ; then in living men. 
" The carnal mind is enmity against God." If 
we say, The Asiatic cholera is in Boston, we 
mean that there are those here who have the 
cholera. There is no sin but in the hearts of 
fallen spirits and men. 

* Is. lx. 12. t Ps. ii. 9. 



118 REASONABLENESS OP 

There is not one of us who, when placed in 
circumstances where God and his requirements 
or prohibitions came in conflict with our wishes, 
has not fought against God. This is no more 
than the powers of hell would do on a larger 
scale, if they had the opportunity. 

The difference is this : There is a plague, we 
will say, in London, which is cutting down a 
thousand in a day. Men think and speak of it 
as an awful scourge. But you are at Bath, or 
Carlisle, sick with the plague, alone, and }^ou are 
ready to die. There is no difference between 
your plague and the plague in London. All the 
symptoms which the thousand victims in London 
have, you exhibit ; but you are not in a com- 
munity where the disease is triumphant. But it 
is killing you ; it does no more in London, only 
that it has gained the upper hand, and puts the 
inhabitants to flight. 

In like manner, sin, disobedience to God, and 
the dislike of him from which it springs, is the 
same in substance everywhere. If we dislike 
God, his attributes, his requirements, his pro- 
hibitions, and if infinite mischief is not the 
consequence, it is because our influence is 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 119 

hemmed in and overruled ; just as we might 
have a contagious disorder, and yet such pre- 
ventives be employed as would keep it from 
doing much harm. 

Though sin has not extended in the universe 
so far as to dethrone God, we have most perfect 
illustrations of its awful power. 

There was a time when all the sin which was 
in the world was enclosed in one sinful wish in 
the breast of one woman. She had permission 
to eat of every tree but one, and that one God 
prohibited, saying, " In the day that thou eatest 
thereof, thou shalt surely die." A transient 
thought, immediately repressed or disapproved, 
would not have been sin ; for, as Milton sa}'S, 

"Evil into the mind of God or man 

May come and go, so unapproved, and leave 
No spot or blame behind ; " * 

but she indulged that wish, and hankered after 
that fruit ; and in that sinful wish ail the sin of 
earth once lay. That wish became an act ; and 
now let him who would write the sins and woes 
of earth first count for us the snow-flakes of five 

* Paradise Lost, B. V. 1. 117. 



120 REASONABLENESS OF 

thousand winters, and tell us the number of 
drops in all the rivers and oceans. " By one 
man's disobedience many were made sinners ; " 
and their history is the history of wars, lust, in- 
temperance, violence. O sin ! what hast thou 
done ? What canst thou not do ? 

There is another illustration still more affect- 
ing. We see a company of evil spirits whom 
Christ is casting out of two men. They hold a 
conversation with the Saviour. If they are 
mere diseases, and not intelligent creatures ca- 
pable of reasoning, but are only personified mal- 
adies, who are making a truce with Christ, and 
if he countenances the delusion that this scene 
is not even so real a thing as a masquerade, but 
a fiction throughout, while questions are put and 
answers given, requests made and permission 
granted,- there is an end to all confidence in lan- 
guage, and indeed the reality of everything may 
be questioned. " And they besought him that 
he would not command them to go out into the 
deep."* They did not mean the sea, for thither 
they soon went of their own choice. The same 
word, in Rev. xx. 3, is translated " bottomless 

* Luke viii. 31. 



EUTUEE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 121 

pit." They are called " evil spirits." But if 
they were intelligent creatures, they were fallen 
creatures ; for we suppose that God would not 
create a demon ; and allowing even that they 
were the souls of lost men, or an order of beings 
who came into existence, as we did, with a fallen 
nature, probation must have been allotted to 
them — a chance to be saved ; for we shall agree 
that no infant, nor any other being, can be lost 
merely for having a fallen nature. These fallen 
spirits, then, were once surrounded by virtuous 
influences ; they may have been angels ; and if 
they were, nay, even if they sang together with 
other morning stars, and shouted for joy with all 
the sons of God, at the birth of the world, they 
fell no further, comparatively, than the sons or 
daughters of men have fallen here, from homes 
of purity and circles of refinement, from pulpits 
and the table of Christ. "So the devils be- 
sought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us 
to go away into the herd of swine." * O sin, 
what hast thou done? This whole legion of 
devils, moreover, had taken possession of two 
poor creatures, and made them maniacs " exceed- 

* Matt. viii. 31. 



122 REASONABLENESS OF 

ing fierce." Why should more than one malig- 
nant spirit wish to possess one human body? 
What mysteries there are in sin, and " depths of 
Satan"! 

The difference between sin as it existed in 
these demons and as it exists in our breasts, is 
the same as between the loathsome victim of the 
plague, and the man who is just taken sick with 
it. There was a time when angels in heaven, 
who, the Bible tells us, were " cast down to 
hell, and delivered into chains of darkness, to be 
reserved unto judgment," * were but just in- 
fected with this malady of sin. There was a 
time when Eve was but just attacked with it. 
We are in the early stage of the disorder ; but 
we have it, and if no remedy be applied, time 
only is wanted to make us desperate. If placed 
in circumstances where we could communicate 
the infection to unfallen creatures, like Eve to 
Adam, and thus to a race, God only can measure 
the consequences. Many a human spirit, if not 
redeemed from its sins, the child now sleeping 
in its cradle, is capable, in the progress of its 
being, of going forth to tempt and ruin some 

* 2 Peter ii. 4, 



FUTUHE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 123 

fair world, and to become the " prince of the 
power of the air " to that fallen province of 
God's empire, and to rival the arch apostate 
angel in his direful history. 

Is this tremendous thing in us — this antago- 
nism to God ? this enemy to the universe ? If 
so, what is it ? 

" Sin is airv want of conformity unto, or trans- 
gression of, the law of God." * The sum of all 
which God requires of man, and prohibits, is 
comprehended in the ten commandments, every 
one of which, in thought, word, or deed, we 
have broken. The Saviour gives us a still more 
simple summary of our duty: " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with 
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all 
thy strength; " and "Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." f We have failed to do this; we 
love and serve the creature more than the Cre- 
ator. Do we avoid that which God disapproves ? 
Do we study to do that which he loves ? If we 
have a family, do we call them together morning 
and night, and read to them out of God's word, 

* Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, 14. 
f Mark xii. 30, 31. 



124 REASONABLENESS OF 

and before them bow the knee to God ? Is it 
natural to do this ? If not, do we give evidence 
that we love God ? His blessings we highly 
prize ; his natural attributes we are ready to 
adore ; but God, with the moral attributes which 
the Bible ascribes to him, we do not love. On 
the contrary, we have feelings and thoughts, and 
we do things, which are " enmity against God," * 
and, carried out into other situations, and exas- 
perated by opposition to our wills, and their in- 
fluence being sufficiently extended, they would 
supplant his throne. 

If we were in the place of God, we may im- 
agine how we would regard sin. He compre- 
hends the interests of all intelligent beings, and 
sees that sin is fatal to his government over 
them, so that, wherever sin reigns, there, and in 
that proportion, there is no God. It would be 
better that the universe should perish than that 
harm should come to the infinite God; but sin 
would not only destroy the universe ; for, if it 
could prevail, it would dethrone God. Let us 
place ourselves where we could see and feel 
what sin would do if it were aimed against us, 

* Rom. viii. 7. 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 125 

and our authority, and the happiness of a uni- 
verse for whose welfare we were responsible. 
How would we legislate about that which would 
inevitably ruin other worlds and races, as it has 
ours ? What would we do to prevent it, and to 
reform and save the rebellious ? Should we do 
anything ? We will take it for granted that we 
would. 

But human wisdom and earthly love could not 
do more than God has done to save sinners. In 
the threefold distinction of the divine nature, we 
hold there is that which is called " the Word," 
which iC was in the beginning with God," and 
which " was God." * Then, seemingly guarding 
against the Sabellian theory of " manifestation," 
it is said again, " The same was in the beginning 
with God;" not therefore God filling a human 
body and soul with influence, and so making a 
mere demonstration of divinity, but it was the 
Word, who was not only God, but (" great is 
the mystery ") " with God," indicating both union 
and distinctness. He became flesh, and dwelt 
among us. 

His great object was to take the sinner's place 

* John i. 1. 



126 REASONABLENESS OF 

as a sacrifice for sins. He did not interpose 
between a wrathful being and his victims. For 
the sake, perhaps, of keeping up in the human 
mind the idea of Deity unmixed with our nature, 
the Father is familiarly called " God," and yet 
as often " God the Father," which word "Father" 
would be, in numerous instances, an unwarrant- 
able pleonasm, if " our heavenly Father," and 
not a person in the Trinity, were intended. 
" The Word," by union with human nature, it is 
supposed, was constituted " Son," and so acted 
in a subordinate capacity; and so we are told, 
without further explanation of the mystery in 
the Godhead, that " God so loved the world that 
he gave his only-begotten Son, that wdiosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." That he died, we know ; 
that he did not die for his own sins, we know ; * 
that " in due time Christ died for the ungodly," 
we know.f " He was wounded for our trans- 
gressions, he w r as bruised for our iniquities ; 
the chastisement of our peace was upon him, 
and with his stripes we are healed." $ It is 
said of him, " Whom God hath set forth to be a 

* Dan. ix. 26. f Rom. v. 6. J Is. liii. 5. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 127 

propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare 
his righteousness for the remission of sins that 
are past, through the forbearance of God ; to de- 
clare, I say, at this time, his righteousness, that 
he might be just, and the justifier of him that 
believeth in Jesus/' * The terms of salvation 
for every penitent sinner are, "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." f 
" He that believeth on him is not condemned." 
" Being now justified by his blood, we shall be 
saved from wrath through him." J " If any man 
sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation 
for our sins,, and not for ours only, but also for 
the sins of the whole world." § All are invited 
to accept pardon and salvation by pleading the 
sufferings and death of this Redeemer ; and it is 
then said, " There is therefore now no condem- 
nation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who 
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." || 

To enforce these offers of mercy, and to sup- 
ply all needful help in being saved, there is One, 
equal in his nature with the Father and the 

* Rom. iii. 25. f Acts xvi. 31. X Rom. v. 9. 

§ 1 John ii. 1, 2. || Rom. viii. 1. 



128 REASONABLENESS OF 

Son, to whom is committed the work of carrying 
redemption into effect in the hearts of men. 
The Holy Ghost, by the plan of salvation, suc- 
ceeds Christ, and strives with men. The Bible 
is put into their hands ; an order of men is ap- 
pointed for the special purpose of being " ambas- 
sadors for Christ," " as though God did be- 
seech them," and they pray them " in Christ's 
stead, be ye reconciled to God." * One day 
in seven is set apart by divine authority for 
special attention to this subject. A most touch- 
ing ordinance is divinely appointed, which every 
month or two appeals to their senses, and most 
powerfully to their hearts. It is no less than a 
simple representation, by two appropriate sym- 
bols, of the body and blood of the Redeemer 
pleading with man, " This do in remembrance of 
me." f Frequently one and another is converted 
from his sins, and accepts this offered mercy ; 
others confess the reality and beauty of the 
change, but they continue in their own chosen 
ways. Members of their families experience 
this change, and God thus draws them " by the 
cords of a man, with bands of love ;" " but," 

* 2 Cor. v. 20. t Luke xxii. 19. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 129 

he is compelled to add, " they knew not that I 
healed them." * And now the angel of death 
comes into their dwellings ; all the softening in- 
fluences of sickness, and the benign influences 
of sorrow, persuade them to be reconciled to 
God, and all in vain. From lips soon to close in 
death, appeals are made to them with all the love 
of a wife, or child, or pastor ; or, it may be, a 
partner in business sends word from his dying 
pillow, and asks them, "What shall it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul? Or what shall a man give in ex- 
change for his soul ? " f 

God in his word has told them that he will 
confine his efforts for their salvation within the 
limits of their natural life, and with urgent love 
he says, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor 
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave 
whither thou goest." J 

Among the closing words of the Bible these 
accents fall on their ears like the last notes of a 
bell that calls to the house of prayer : " He that 
is unjust let him be unjust still, and he that is 

* Hosea xi. 4, 3. f Matt. xvi. 26. $ Eccl. ix. 10. 

9 



130 REASONABLENESS OF 

filthy let him be filthy still, and he that is right- 
eous let him be righteous still, and he that is 
holy let him be holy still." * The vast majority 
of all who receive the Bible as the word of God 
unite and testify '* how that Christ died for our 
sins, according to the Scriptures ; " f that there 
is pardon through his blood ; that he " delivered 
us from the wrath to come ; " f and that no pro- 
bation after death is intimated in the Bible. 

But notwithstanding all this, men refuse to 
repent of their sins, and they persist in their re- 
pugnance to God. They go into the next world 
from amidst these influences of mercy, in total 
disregard of all which has been done to save 
them. 

The question is, What is it reasonable for 
them to expect? Only two things can- take 
place : Further measures will be used to reclaim 
them, or, They must be forever given up to sin 
and its consequences. 

It is not for man to say what shall now take 
place. Will he insist that the sinner shall have 
no further trial ? He must not prescribe limits 
to the mercy of God. " For my thoughts are 

* Rev. xxii. 11. f 1 Cor. xv. 3. J 1 Thess. i. 10. 



FUTTTBE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 131 

not your thoughts, neither are your ways my 
ways, saith the Lord." * Will man insist that 
the sinner ought to have another period of pro- 
bation? He is equally at fault if he dictates to 
the justice of God. Revelation is the only 
source of knowledge upon this subject. Those 
of our race who have received the word of God 
implicitly, and have interpreted that book, as 
they do all writings, according to its most ob- 
vious import, have, with inconsiderable excep- 
tions, believed that eternal punishment is re- 
vealed. But it is with the reasonableness of the 
doctrine that we are now concerned. There is 
not a doctrine of revelation — God forbid ! — 
which is against reason. It may be above reason 
in many things, but it never contradicts either the 
known and established principles of the human 
conscience and understanding, nor the palpable 
truths of human experience and observation. 
Now, upon this ground we plant ourselves, and 
say, that, so far as we can judge, endless future 
punishment is reasonable. He who disbelieves 
the evangelical system cannot prove the doctrine 
to be reasonable. Finding future eternal pun- 

* Is. lv. 8. 



132 REASONABLENESS OF 

ishment disclosed in the Bible, it commends 
itself to our understanding and conscience as a 
reasonable truth. 

One objection to it is this. It is said, — 

"Eternal punishment is too long as a penalty 
for the sins of a short life.'" 

None but God can judge here. The important 
question is, Was the transgressor duly notified ? 
He is in a foreign land, and. is made fully ac- 
quainted with a law and its penalty, which he 
thinks is exceedingly severe. The government, 
however, have special reasons for the enactment ; 
but he prefers the risk of the penalty to the 
loss of a certain benefit, and is without, excuse, 
for he transgressed with his eyes open. 

Is it just for one to lose so much in conse- 
quence of so brief a period of transgression ? 
This depends on the information possessed be- 
forehand. A passenger by the steamer does not 
expect that, if notice of the hour of departure 
is communicated to him, the bell will toll a 
whole day, or even an hour for his dilatori- 
ness. He may by losing the voyage, change the 
prospect of life, and one half minute can decide 
whether it shall be so. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 133 

Forgery, arson, manslaughter, conceived and 
executed in the briefest space of time, have no 
valid defence in the shortness of the time oc- 
cupied by the deed. A day is not too short in 
which to commit a crime which will be punished 
by imprisonment for life. We take away a 
man's whole life, and he a young man, for an 
act committed within one hour. 

If a note has matured, bankruptcy is not ar- 
rested because the promisor received only one 
notice. 

We probably never heard it objected to eter- 
nal salvation, that it is too long to be the con- 
sequence and reward of this brief life. That 
heaven is promised to the righteous, and that 
it will be without end, no one doubts. But 
what if we should say, as we might with as good 
reason as in objecting to endless punishment, 
"Life is too short in which to merit heaven ; we 
ought to be subjected after death to a longer 
probation, be placed in new circumstances of 
trial for a period that should bear some propor- 
tion to the greatness of the reward"? What 
period of trial would be thought an equivalent 
for measureless felicity, it would be hard indeed 



134 REASONABLENESS OF 

to say ; and we are therefore led to the principle 
that the length of time in which good or evil 
actions take place is no proper measure of their 
desert. We act upon this principle in every- 
thing. 

Much use is made of this objection to endless 
punishment as urged by the late Rev. John 
Foster, an evangelical Baptist, of England. He 
writes a letter to a young ministerial friend who 
had asked his views on the subject of endless 
punishment. Mr. Foster sa}~s that he has made 
much less research into this subject than his 
young friend had probably done, and that he 
had been " too content, perhaps, to let an 
opinion or impression admitted in early life dis- 
pense with protracted inquiry and various read- 
ing." He then says: "The general, not very 
far short of universal, judgment of divines in 
affirmation of the doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment, must be acknowledged a weighty consid- 
eration. It is a fair question, Is it likely that so 
many thousands of able, learned, benevolent, 
and pious men should all have been in error? 
And the language of Scripture is formidably 
strong ; so strong that it must be an argument 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 135 

of extreme cogency that would authorize a 
limited interpretation." 

But his answer to all this is, in his own 
words, — " the stupendous idea of eternity," — 
upon which he proceeds to dwell with great 
power. 

To this, one reply may be, that the great and 
good men of all evangelical denominations, as 
capable as Mr. Foster of appreciating the awful 
idea of eternity, "have generally," and, as he 
himself says, " not very far short of universally," 
received this doctrine. Almost every believer 
in it has, at some time, had some relation or 
friend whose condition at death excited fearful 
thoughts, and clothed the grave with more 
than midnight darkness. The very strongest 
temptations have thus been presented to be- 
lievers in the doctrine to find or create insuper- 
able objections to it ; yet the vast majority of 
Christian believers who have lost friends con- 
cerning whose condition they entertain but little 
hope, remain persuaded that the doctrine is 
revealed. Mr. Foster had no knowledge or 
penetration which they did not possess ; he also 
"was formed out of the clay; "he could sub- 



136 REASONABLENESS OF 

stantiate no claim to have his feelings of repug- 
nance regarded as paramount to the feelings of 
submission and faith with which his Christian 
brethren, in the hour of their sorrow, have de- 
liberately declared their belief in this doctrine. 
But we are furnished with another reply, 
in a letter of Mr. Foster himself to Rev. Dr. 
Harris, on another subject and at a different 
time, in which he describes this world as he 
thinks it would strike the inhabitants of another 
planet. These few words will show the tenor 
of his remarks : " To me it appears a most mys- 
teriously awful economy, overspread by a lurid 
shade. I pray for the piety to maintain a 
humble submission to the wise and righteous 
Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature, 
created in purity, ruined at the very origin, 
<fec, the grand remedial visitation, Chris tianitj^, 
laboring in a difficult progress — soon perverted 
— at the present hour known and even nomi- 
nally acknowledged by very greatly the minority 
of the race — its progress distanced by the in- 
crease of the population — .thousands every day 
passing out of the world in no state of fitness for 
a pure and happy state elsewhere, — O, it is a 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 137 

most confounding and appalling contemplation." 
So he describes this world in very much the 
same way in which he has depicted future end- 
less retributions ; and we may say that had he 
been told of such a world as ours, under the 
government of a good God, he would have had 
misgivings and objections not unlike those which 
he has expressed on the subject of future pun- 
ishment. He excites distrust and fear in our 
minds with regard to the government of the 
world. We should not feel happy in the thought 
that God reigns, nor could we see how the mul- 
titude of the isles should be glad thereof, should 
we live under the influence of such views as 
those of this truly able and excellent man. 

It is objected again that " a mere mortal 
cannot, by any sins which he can commit, merit 
endless punishment.''' 

Whether he actually does incur it, we say 
again, must be ascertained from revelation. In 
reply to this objection, we are to remember that 
it is not one single transgression which God is 
called upon to punish — a sudden, unpremedi- 
tated, or even one deliberate act, for which act 
the sinner is sorry ; but it is continued disobe- 



138 REASONABLENESS OP 

dience, in opposition to all the methods of divine 
love and wisdom employed to turn us from our 
sins. Conscience has faithfully done her work 
until she was seared ; warnings and threatening^ 
have exhausted their strength ; the cross of 
Christ and the influences of the Holy Spirit 
have proved of no avail. 

There may be little sins against some of the 
gods of heathenism, but there can be no little 
sin against Jehovah. But how is man " little " ? 
He has competent knowledge of the character 
of God; he is only "a little lower than the 
angels,"* and has dominion over all the works 
of God. He can comprehend the starry heav- 
ens; he is godlike in his original nature, for "in 
the image of God made he him." The sublime 
truths which God has revealed to man show 
what estimate God has of man's capacity and 
responsibility. A finite creature can insult the 
majesty of heaven as deliberately and intelli- 
gently as the archangel ; he can annihilate the 
authority of God in his own soul, and wherever 
he has influence ; if all finite creatures should do 
this, — and there are no creatures who are not 

* Psalm viii. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 139 

finite, — there would be no moral universe, no 
divine government. 

It is said, "It is a libel on the character of God 
to believe that he can bear to punish Ms children 
forever" 

Had we known beforehand that God was to 
create offspring whom he would teach to call 
him by the endearing name of Father, and 
then should see four hundred of these his chil- 
dren in such a scene of indescribable agony 
and destruction as was recently witnessed on 

board the , we should say the analogy 

between divine and human parentage surely 
is imperfect. God is something besides a 
"Father;" he is King and Judge. Men never 
discipline their children by drowning them, and 
burning them, and tearing them in pieces. The 
destruction of the Canaanites for their iniquity is 
so terrible, that some, for that reason, reject the 
Old Testament, which approves it. God's judg- 
ments are a great deep. True, " he made birds 
and flowers ; " all the exquisite sensibilities of 
the human system are his gift ; the natural and 
moral world are, by his love and skill, most 



140 REASONABLENESS OF 

beautifully adapted to each other ; and will he 
hide his face forever from a single child ? No, 
not unless that child persists to hide his face and 
withhold his heart from God. " For he will not 
lay on man more than is right, that he should 
enter into judgment with God." * He is seeking 
continually to make his children love him. The 
Sabbath day perpetually reminds every one of 
them of God. Church spires everywhere point 
to heaven. Church-going bells call men to 
prayer, and to hear the gospel. Friends, by 
their words and example, persuade men to love 
and serve God. How many people are there, 
probably, in this city, for example, who have not 
had, and do not have, not only opportunity, but 
persuasion of some kind, within and without, to 
fear God ? There are few, if any, who see the 
lightning or hear the thunder, without having the 
thought of their accountableness flash through 
their minds. If but a hearse appears in the 
streets, all who see it are left without excuse 
should they die in their sins. "By the things 
which are made " God is so " clearly seen," that 
even idolaters are " without excuse ; " much 

* Job xxxiv. 23. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 141 

more they who, to say no more, live where the 
Christian Sabbath, like the quiet moon, at short 
and regular intervals, arrests and turns the 
mighty tide of human affairs, so that even the 
prisoner in his cell feels it lifting and bearing 
him heavenward, and the Sabbath-breaker him- 
self, by the very increase of his gains on that 
clay, or by the opportunity for sloth, or by the 
feeling which leads him to hasten or delay his 
drive, to avoid the church-going people, has 
conviction of sin and admonition of duty suffi- 
cient to bar excuses and to make him speech- 
less in the day when God rises up to judg- 
ment. 

But at last the day of life is over — the period 
within which God told us that his efforts for our 
conversion would be limited, and after which, 
he warned us, would be the judgment, and end- 
less retribution. Some said that this was im- 
possible in the nature of things. They were 
told that the Bible literally declared it. They 
said that it was figurative, or a parable. They 
were reminded of the words of Jesus, the final 
Judge, relating the very words of the last sen- 
tence upon the wicked. They said that the God 



142 REASONABLENESS OF 

who made spring, and birds, and flowers, and 
human affections, and who is himself a Father, 
could not see men suffer without end. But the 
love of God, they are told, is not seen in spring, 
and birds, and flowers, and human happiness, so 
much as in this, that " God so loved the world 
that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who- 
soever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life." "Herein is love; not 
that we loved God, but that he loved us, and 
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." * 
But all this proves of no avail ; they go to " the 
judgment-seat of Christ," " every one," to " re- 
ceive the things done in the body, whether it be 
good or bad." f 

Shall God now violate the fundamental charac- 
teristic of their constitution, that is, free agency, 
and instead of governing them by motives, treat 
them like moulded clay, which, when it does 
not suit him, the potter presses together again 
on the wheel, and makes of it another vessel ? 
That is not such a government as God chooses 
to administer, but a government of motives, 
addressed to free and accountable creatures. 

* John iv. 10. f2 Cor. v. 10. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 143 

What shall now be done with those whom God 
has failed in his efforts to turn and save ? Some 
reply, " He ought to punish them till they do 
repent." 

And yet they who say this, many of them, tell 
us, as one great argument against future endless 
punishment, that " we have misery enough in 
this world, without being punished in the next." 
Therefore, by their own acknowledgment, God 
has already used dreadful methods of chastise- 
ment with them ; so great that they say there 
cannot be any future punishment of sin. Yet 
these mortal agonies of body and mind, these 
life-long trials and sorrows, have failed to make 
them love and serve God. Will it be useful 
that he should proceed and punish them further ? 
Can God heap upon them sorrows more bitter 
than they have felt at the graves of their loved 
ones, and at their return from those graves to 
their desolated dwellings ? Are there other strokes 
of his lightnings better fitted to rive and consume 
their spirits than those with which they have 
already been struck ? It is not reasonable. The 
wrath of God is not " the power of God and the 



144 REASONABLENESS OF 

wisdom of God unto salvation." * We have a 
different opinion respecting our Maker from that 
which leads one to believe that anger, fury, 
vengeance are the perfection of his governmental 
influences ; as they surely are, if they are more 
efficacious than the love which he has manifested 
in the Son of his love. 

God himself says, " What more could be done 
to nry vineyard that I have not done in it ? '' 

We suppose, therefore, — and we think it is 
reasonable, — that if .we do not repent of our 
sins, and are not willing to accept Christ, and 
all the efforts of mercy to save us, God will 
suffer us to sin against him forever. He will 
not hinder us from having our own chosen way. 
Shall we rebel against this? Will we say, 
" This is cruel ; it is tyrannical, unworthy of 
God, our heavenly Father, to let us have our 
own choice? That choice, we know, is not 
good ; but he ought to make us good. What ! 
suffer us to sin against him forever ! ' ' We chose 
to sin against him as long as we could ; and now 
it is not unreasonable to give us the desire of our 
hearts. But God may say, This I will do. I will 

* Rom. i. 16. 1 Cor. i. 18, 24. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 145 

place all of you who sin, in a world by your- 
selves, from which I and my friends will forever 
withdraw. Perhaps we secretly say, " If this be 
all, we do not so much object. This is not hell." 
But suppose that when God withdraws from us, 
he takes everything away with him. This pres- 
ent world cannot be a pattern of a world where 
all is sin. For this world was made for an upright 
race, and when they fell, nature itself, in most 
things, survived the fall. We are not to suppose 
that the wicked will find themselves in a world 
of beauty, where they may reconstruct society 
after the model of the present life, and where 
they shall enjoy liberty and all the blessings of 
God's providence. But if God departs from 
them, it is reasonable to suppose that he will 
leave no proofs of his love to them what- 
ever ; for he says, " Woe also unto them when 
I depart from them."* He would take away, 
we must suppose, all their domestic relations, 
friendships, social pleasures, books, every pur- 
suit of knowledge, music, travels, quiet sleep, 
morning and evening salutations of loved ones, 
and change the whole face of nature ; for God 

* Hosea ix. 12. 

10 



146 REASONABLENESS OF 

would not have made so many things just to give 
pleasure, had he made this world for the perma- 
nent abode of rebels ; and when we leave this 
world, if we have shut God out of it b} r our sins, 
we cannot expect to find a beautiful world like 
this prepared for our abode. It is of great use 
to us to see good people here ; we feel safer to 
think that there are churches and meetings for 
prayer, and the Lord's supper, though we de- 
cline any part in them. These things are for 
our profit ; and the good and the bad share 
alike, because this is a state of probation, not of 
reward. But if we refuse to be won by these 
things, then it may be as though a certain vision 
of Jeremiah were, in some sense, fulfilled in our 
future abode. He describes Jerusalem wasted, 
and all her people gone into captivity. " I 
beheld the earth, and lo, it was without form 
and void ; and the heavens, and they had no 
light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they 
trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I 
beheld, and lo, there was no man, and all the 
birds of heaven were fled." * When 'God tells 
us what heaven is, f he describes the population 

* Jer. ir. 23-25. f Rev. sxii. 14. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 147 

of them that are "without — -dogs, sorcerers," 
and others ; as though he said, " I will gather 
sinners together in one place, bring together all 
the obscene, liars, murderers, pirates, idolaters, 
into one community with you whose tastes have 
been cultivated ; for why should I discriminate 
between those who have together rebelled against 
me, and rejected my Son ? " If to any, by reason 
of their great accomplishments of mind and man- 
ners, this will be specially intolerable, they must 
remember that in those endowments they have 
special motives and helps towards being saved, 
and to save others. " Thou in thy lifetime re- 
ceivedst thy good things ; " but " thou may est be 
no longer steward." 

Would there be anything unreasonable in 
this? In view of all which God has done to 
save the soul, in view of the full notice which 
we have received that this life is our only period 
of probation, and the opportunities which we 
have had to secure eternal life, we cannot accuse 
the Almighty of injustice if we find that there 
is no opportunity after death to repent and be- 
lieve the gospel. Above all, we cannot reasona- 
bly expect, from what we already know of God, 



148 REASONABLENESS OF 

that having expended upon us all which the gos- 
pel of his grace includes, he will, upon the failure 
of that which is "the brightness of his glory," 
put us into a prison, and wear out our spirits 
with suffering, and thus reduce us, like refract- 
ory culprits, to a state of mind in which we can- 
not refuse to love him. Such is not the Being 
whom many of us delight to call our heavenly 
Father. If any worship such a God as this, they 
have their liberty to do so ; but let them not 
complain to us of unreasonableness in our views 
of God. 

It seems reasonable, therefore, to believe, in 
common with the vast majority in all ages of 
those who receive the Bible as the word of God, 
that all who fail to repent and accept the pardon 
of their sins through Jesus Christ in this life, 
will at death find those words to be literally true, 
which seem to be placed among the last words of 
the Bible by divine arrangement, for the solemn 
effect which they always have upon the human 
heart : " He that is unjust let him be unjust still, 
and he that is filthy let him be filthy still, and he 
that is righteous let him be righteous still, and he 
that is holy let him be holy still. And behold I 



FUTUBE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 149 

come quickly; and my reward is with me, to 
give every man according as his work shall 
be."* 

As to the heathen, we are not their judge. 
The first and second chapters of the Epistle to 
the Romans, however, are very explicit with re- 
gard to them. u The invisible things of God," 
that is, " his eternal power and Godhead," " are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things that 
are made; so that they are without excuse."! 
We are told that " they hold the truth," but ; ' in 
unrighteousness;" therefore it is said, "the 
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against " 
them. J We sometimes hear a passage, in this 
connection, quoted thus: " For as many as have 
sinned without law shall also be judged without 
law." Not so. It reads, " For as many as have 
sinned without law shall also perish without 
law." § It is a common remark, but it will bear 
repetition, " We shall either find the heathen in 
heaven, if we ourselves are there, or see good 
and satisfactory reasons for their not being 
there." 

*Eev. xxii.ll, 12. fRom.i. 20. J Rom. i. 18. §Rom. ii. 12. 



150 REASONABLENESS OF 

Far too much is made of the question, and 
great injury has been done by it, whether or not 
there will be literal fire in the future punishment 
of the wicked. It is well to discourage such a 
discussion. We shall have bodies after the resur- 
rection, for "all that are in their graves shall 
hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come 
forth, they that have done good unto the resur- 
rection of life, and they that have done evil unto 
the resurrection of damnation." Our bodies will, 
of course, be of a less spiritual nature than the 
soul, otherwise two souls will be conjoined in one 
person. We naturally suppose that the object of 
the body will be to relate the soul to an exter- 
nal world ; as glass, in the telescope, though a 
grosser object than the eye, helps vision, so the 
body will aid the soul hereafter, as here. This 
we all admit. Now, in what element, if airy, 
the righteous or the wicked will live hereafter, 
is of no possible importance to us, seeing that the 
primary source of happiness or misery with in- 
telligent creatures must be mental, and if there 
be external sources of pleasure or suffering, they 
are mere circumstances in their condition ; they 
ire not the substantive occasion of their joy or 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 151 

sorrow. To represent the Most High as inflict- 
ing tortures on the bodies of the wicked strikes 
us as unworthy of the conceptions concerning 
God with which the Bible inspires us. A world 
of sinners, unmitigated by the presence of a 
single good being, God himself and all his re- 
straining influences forever withdrawn, needs no 
penal fires to increase our sense of its horror; 
indeed, they rather detract from our ideas of the 
most intense misery. If all that is personified 
by " death," and all the mental, moral, and so- 
cial elements of what is called " hell," are to be 
" cast into a lake of fire," every intelligent per- 
son would suppose that the element containing 
them would be of little importance. They would 
be no more to the inhabitants than the element 
of water could be to Pontius Pilate, whom a 
great poet represents as in a flood, his hands 
above it, and he washing them, 

" Which still unwashen strove," 

in memory of his taking water to wash those 
hands of a certain prisoner's blood. No one 
would suppose that living in the element of 
water could be a principal source of misery in 



152 EEASONABLENESS OF 

such a punishment. But we read, " Then shall 
the King say also unto them on the left hand, 
Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, 
prepared for the devil and his angels." Figu- 
rative language, it may justly be said, is out of 
place in a judicial sentence, for, of all utterances, 
this should be as strictly literal as justice itself. 

If, now, we should believe, on this single pas- 
sage, or for any other reason, that the element in 
which future retribution will be administered is 
declared to be fire, instead of air, or water, or 
earth, we should do vast injustice to the subject 
of divine retributions to intrude the idea. I refer 
to it, therefore, for a purpose, which seems to me 
important, of vindicating our belief in future 
endless retributions from imputations of gross- 
ness and physical barbarity. We use the lan- 
guage of the Saviour and of his apostles without 
hesitation, and there we stop. Any details of 
the curse, and of the punishment, and of what 
is "prepared," would add nothing to our con- 
ceptions of the dread sentence from the lips 
of Him whose "left hand" was once nailed to 
the atoning cross, for those whom he bids, 
"Depart." 



FUTUKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 153 

If the language of Christ in that last sentence, 
and in other places, relating to future punish- 
ment, be figurative, we remember that, by the 
laws of the human mind, figurative language is 
generally resorted to in consequence of insuf- 
ficiency in literal terms. We do not cavil at the 
use of figurative speech, nor subtract from its 
intention, when we know that the speaker is 
serious and earnest. If a master-in-chancery in- 
forms a man that his property has proved " to be 
zero," the man will not remind his friends, nor 
insist with his creditors, that the expression is 
only metaphorical. 

We believe that the threatening of future 
endless punishment has been one great means 
of what little fear of God there has hitherto been 
in this world ; and that it has been a powerful 
element in the causes which have led to the sal- 
vation of the " multitude which no man can 
number," who " fled for refuge to lay hold upon 
the hope set before them." We are not ashamed 
to say that we believe in, and we fear, the ever- 
lasting wrath of God, and that this has been 
a means of leading us to believe in "his Son 



154 REASONABLENESS OF 

from heaven, even Jesus, which delivered us 
from the wrath to come." * 

Nor is our doctrine one that narrows and 
enfeebles the mind. It is. connected with a 
stupendous system of truths. It leads us to 
believe that this world, small as it is, is made 
use of by the Creator to illustrate principles in 
his government, " to the intent that now unto 
principalities and powers in heavenly places 
might be known by the church the manifold 
wisdom of God."f 

That this world is the smallest but two in the 
planetary system, is no more a valid objection to 
its being used for infinite purposes of wisdom, 
than it would be to object to the size of the slate 
on which La Place wrought out his logarithms 
for his Mecanique Celeste. God is solving prob- 
lems in this world with sin ; the results may 
enter into the practical knowledge of unnum- 
bered worlds, as the answers to problems are 
transferred to books of navigation, and are the 
confidence of them that are afar off upon the sea. 
Our own Lexington and Bunker Hill were not 
too small for transactions which brought this 

* 1 Thess. i. 10. t Eph. iii. 10. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 155 

nation into being ; nor did one field in Waterloo 
prove too small to have the destiny of half of 
Europe decided there. The cross of a Redeemer 
has stood here ; things are associated with it 
which we are told " angels desire to look into."* 
"All things were created by him and for him, and 
he is before all things, and by him all things con- 
sist."! "We see Jesus, who was made a little 
lower than the angels for the suffering of death, 
crowned with glory and honor ; that he, by the 
grace of God, should taste death for every man." 
So we believe in a sacrifice for sin, which is 
made infinitely efficacious by the presence in the 
person of Jesus of the Word, who was " with 
God," and " was God." In such a Redeemer 
and in such a redemption we see our infinite 
ruin. We believe that God will show, by means 
of those who reject this redemption, what sin is 
capable of doing, and then, by letting sinners eat 
of the fruit of their own ways, and filling them 
with their own devices, perhaps he will, by the 
help of it, so instruct and govern the universe of 
free, accountable beings, that it shall forever be 
said, " Dominion and fear are with him ; he 

* 1 Peter i. 12= t Col. i. 16, 17. 



156 REASONABLENESS OF 

maketh peace in his high places."* An end- 
less heaven is prepared, in which the righteous 
will have bodies " fashioned like unto Christ's 
glorious body, according to the working where- 
by he is able even to subdue all things unto 
himself." Thus being associated most wonder- 
fully with the incarnate Word, they will be the 
objects of love with all who worship at the 
throne of God and of the Lamb, and not only so, 
but with Him who will say of us, with more joy 
than that with which he regards the ninety and 
nine just persons who need no repentance, " I 
have found the sheep that was lost." 

But, in the meantime, we read that " the 
Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking ven- 
geance on them that know not God, and that 
obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ ; " 
— such is the crime and the accusation ; — " who 
shall be punished with everlasting destruction 
from the presence of the Lord, and from the 
glory of his power, when he shall come to be 
glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all 

* Job xxv. 2. 



FUTTJKE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 157 

them that believe (for our testimony among you 
was believed) in that day." * 

The penalty annexed to a law is all that 
makes it a law ; without a penalty, it is no 
more a law than an extract from a sermon. 
The penalty is the expression of the lawgiver's 
opinion of the crime. There is something in 
weak and insufficient penalties, and in bail far 
below the offence, which makes the heart faint 
and sick. It must inspire holy beings with con- 
fidence, who know what sin is, and what it 
deserves, and what it would do to them if it 
could triumph, to see and feel that there is a 
Supreme Being, who, with all his love, has no 
doting fondness, nor any weakness, but can bear 
to see the wicked suffer, if necessary and right. 
They consider his word, " The soul that sinneth, 
it shall die/' and they see in it the foundation of 
their confidence in God. How much evil is 
there in sin ? It is itself evil ; anti-govern- 
mental, subverting every form of happiness ; its 
tendency, as we have seen, is to dethrone God. 
If God affixes less than an infinite punishment to 
sin, it shows that he considers it less than an 

* 2 Thess. i. 7-10. 



158 BEASONABLENESS OF 

i 

infinite evil. If the penalty threatened against 
such a sin be less than infinite, the natural in- 
ference would be, To sin against God is not an 
infinite evil, for it has no infinite punishment. 
Men could say, and all races on probation could 
say, If we sin against God, our punishment will 
come to an end ; and after that, there will be an 
eternity in heaven, in comparison with which 
our immense duration of punishment will become 
as a drop to the sea. Men, they would say, 
escaped at last, and are now universally and for- 
ever happy in heaven ; and so world after world 
might become rebellious, and their histories be 
like those of earth. We think it reasonable to 
say, Far better that the comparatively few 
from earth should bear the consequences of 
their sin forever, than that, by an insufficient 
punishment of sin, disaster should come upon 
realms we know not how many and great. I say 
this to meet the objection that the everlasting 
punishment of any, whether comparatively a few, 
or even of many, is to be a blot on the govern- 
ment of God. For the whole question may re- 
solve itself into this : Is it best that God should 
have a moral government? If that involves the 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 159 

possibility of sin, some would say, No ; others 
would say, Yes, provided' the sinners might be 
as free in their sin as the righteous are in their 
righteousness ; then, for the sake of the in- 
conceivable bliss in a universe of intelligent 
creatures, let there be this government, by 
motives, and let " the righteousness of the right- 
eous be upon him, and the wickedness of the 
wicked be upon him." Angels, it appears, were 
jDlaced on probation in heaven, and under the 
most favorable circumstances ; man was placed 
in probation in paradise, with slight inducement 
to sin ; man had a Redeemer in the person of his 
Creator ; angels may have had an equivalent 
motive to obedience in the immediate presence 
of their Creator, and in full knowledge of what 
a forfeiture they would incur by sin. Angels 
sinned, notwithstanding all that Heaven had 
done to keep them upright ; men perish, not- 
withstanding the redemption made by their God 
and Saviour. The illustrations which their eter- 
nal punishment will afford of the nature of sin, 
of the love of God, of divine justice, of free 
agency, of holiness and its infinite rewards, we 
say it is not unreasonable to believe, will out- 



160 REASONABLENESS OF 

weigh the personal sufferings of those who vol- 
untarily sin and perish. We say, voluntarily 
perish ; for God will give to each one according 
to his deeds. Though there were an inconceiv- 
able multitude who should perish, yet in the 
immense variety of their individual cases, dis- 
criminating justice will be weighed out to them 
with a care and exactness unapproached by 
the exquisite balances in the mint, or with the 
apothecary. Could holy beings get the im- 
pression that there is one soul from Christian, 
pagan, or heathen lands, with whom its Maker 
had dealt harshly, or laid upon him one stripe 
more than was his due, there would be sudden 
silence among them ; they would look one upon 
another ; and the seraphim who, in their wor- 
ship, spread more of their six wings to cover 
themselves with than to fly, would spread them 
all to fly, — whither they might not say, but only 
where they might no longer be constrained to 
cry, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of hosts ! 
No such occasion ever will be given for such loss 
of confidence; but they will say, "Alleluia! sal- 
vation, and glory, and honor, and power unto 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 161 

the Lord our God; for true and righteous are 
his judgments." * 

As those who desire to be of good repute with 
you as men of understanding, and of humane, 
generous sentiments and feelings, we do not 
hesitate to say, that the "reasonableness of 
future endless punishment "is as plain to us 
as its scriptural proofs. 

If, when we read that it would have been 
good for Judas Iscariot that he had never 
been born, and therefore that there is no eter- 
nity of happiness for him, to follow any vast 
period of expiatory suffering, — if we are ex- 
pressly told that blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost hath never forgiveness, neither in this 
world nor in that which is to come, — if it be 
true that Satan and his angels are reserved in 
chains under darkness .unto the judgment of the 
great day, and if then a part of our race are to 
be consigned to the same abode with them for 
retribution, — whose eternity is expressed by the 
selfsame word which is employed to designate 
the duration of happiness for the righteous ; and 

* Rev. xix. 1. 
11 



162 REASONABLENESS OF 

for these and other equally powerful representa- 
tions of the Bible, we have unwavering faith in 
the doctrine as a revealed truth ; the confidence 
with which we believe it may be judged of when 
we say, that it commends itself to our reason as 
truly as it does to our faith. How it commends 
itself to our faith, may be learned by knowing 
that the doctrine does not stand as an isolated 
thing in our belief. The laws of comparative 
anatomy, so to speak, may be applied to it, and 
we say, If certain things are true, which in our 
earliest discoveries of practical truth we are con- 
fident are essential to salvation, then this doc- 
trine is as really required, as immense vertebras 
of an unknown animal require that the undiscov- 
ered ribs should also be immense. An astrono- 
mer notices the slower or quicker rate of motion 
in a planet at one part of its orbit, and he tells 
you that there must be a world beyond it, not 
yet seen ; he tells you its size, its gravity, its 
orbit, its rate of motion ; and when at last 
Neptune is discovered, it proves to be precisely 
that which Uranus dictated by his perturbations. 
So that the doctrine of endless retribution is not, 
with us, a mere dogma ; it belongs to a great 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 163 

scheme of revealed truth which we call the 
" plan of redemption," all of which stands or 
falls together. 

The key to this great scheme — "which," we 
are warranted to say, " in other ages was not 
made known unto the sons of men as it is now 
revealed unto the holy apostles and prophets" 
— is the Supreme Deity of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Believe that, and logically you are led 
to receive the whole. Reject that, and you can- 
not consistently believe the doctrine now under 
discussion. 

"'What think ye of Christ?' is the test 
To try both your state and your scheme." 

The Creator, the Second Person in the God- 
head, takes our nature ; that mysterious, com- 
plex Being goes to the cross, and dies. Then 
the atonement follows, as a matter of course ; 
and if an atonement is made for sin, then the 
wages of sin is death. If man can atone for sin 
by ages of suffering, and then reach heaven, it 
is unreasonable, we say, to believe that this 
stupendous sacrifice would have been made. So 



164 BEASONABLENESS OF 

that Christ is " the power of God and the wisdom 
of God unto salvation." There are words of 
mighty import in that passage : "Who hath made 
him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we 
might be made the righteousness of God in 
him." * 

"The wages of sin is death." Some 
say, The wages of sin is conscience ; some, The 
wages of sin is discipline ; some, The wages of 
sin is imprisonment for a great indefinite period, 
for the purpose of punishment and restoration. 
Let us adhere to the Bible : " The wages of sin 
is death." If you call it figurative, the laws of 
rhetoric teach us that a meaning totally opposite 
to the nature of a figure cannot be true. The 
ruling idea conveyed by the word death is ter- 
mination. If you search the Bible for instances 
in which death means a limited infliction, and so 
reduce one side of the equation in the passage 
from which the text is taken, you must by neces- 
sity reduce the other side ; and thus, so much 
as you diminish death, you must diminish life ; 
for if death be not death, neither is life eter- 
nal life. 

* 2 Cor. v. 21. 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 165 

Notice also the two contrasted words in the 
verse from which the text is taken : " The wages 
of sin is death; but the gift of God % is eternal 
life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Death for 
sin is " wages " — something earned or merited. 
Eternal life is not "wages" to us; it is to 
angels. The law is the angels' gospel. They 
stand by obedience. But to us eternal life, if 
we have it, is without works — a gift, unmerited, 
free. Having forfeited heaven by sin, God 
stands ready to give it to us on certain terms, 
the terms and method themselves being no less 
wonderful than the gift. 

Need I remind you that this is a subject 
which, for each of us, is of unparalleled inter- 
est ? Each of us may, without presumption, 
say with his Maker, " I live forever." If God 
says, " Of my years there is no end," the words 
may be responded to by us : Of my years there 
is no end. But each of us is also a sinner, 
ruined and lost. We believe that sin can be 
forgiven only by faith in Jesus Christ, w T ho, by 
his sufferings and death, is a substitute for the 
sinner, and constitutes for him a righteousness 



166 KEASONABLENESS OF 

which takes away his condemnation, and pre- 
pares for his sanctification and salvation. We 
are told that there is salvation in no other way, 
and, moreover, that unbelief of it, where there 
has been sufficient opportunity to understand it, 
proceeds from a wrong state of feeling, and is 
therefore morally wrong, and that such unbelief 
is declared by Christ and his apostles to be the 
greatest of all pardonable sins. Christ says, 
" He that believeth not the Son shall not see 
life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 
Do we who preach tell the people this ? Surely 
it is not possible for the Son of God to suffer 
and die in our stead, and we be innocent if we 
do not believe in him ; but we shall acid to the 
guilt of sin the heavier guilt of rejecting the 
offered remedy, procured at such infinite expense. 
The sight of Christ will close our lips if we are 
not saved. He portrayed the scenes of the last 
judgment ; the separation, the welcome of the 
righteous, and the sinner's doom. And having 
done this, he went to " a place which is called 
Calvary," and died to save us from the con- 
demnation which he had so faithfully and affect- 



FUTURE, ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 167 

ingly portrayed. If we fail to believe in him, 
and he therefore fails to redeem us from our 
sin, we must experience the truth of our text. 
And when the judgment is passed by, and the 
wicked have gone to their own place, and angels 
stand in silence, weeping, and thinking of their 
end, methinks I hear one of them break the 
silence and say, After the Saviour had suffered 
for them, it is an infinite pity that they should 
perish. And may many (may it be all !) of you, 
who now are unbelievers, but then redeemed 
sinners, continue the strain and say, " For God 
so loved the world that he gave his only-begot- 
ten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." Salva- 
tion! Salvation! Every one of us can be 
saved. " For God hath not appointed us to 
wrath, but to obtain salvation hy our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake 
or sleep we should live together with him." O 
Saviour ! how sweet thy name ! how precious 
thy dying love, in connection with this theme ! 
Thou art our sun, pouring celestial beauty on 
those clouds which are round about God, and 



168 ENDLESS PUNISHMENT. 

painting on this darkness and tempest at which 
we have gazed, a rainbow In sight like unto an 
emerald. May we all cast our crowns at thy 
feet, saying : " Unto hem that loved us, and 
washed us from our sins in his own 
blood, and hath made us kings and priests 
unto God and his Father ; to him be glory 
and dominion forever and ever. amen." 



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by "iF'.A.icsrs'z - " &c " zf^-stjh lEiTTasrTiisra-TOnsr. 



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Z3-5T " :E\A-3r:E: HTJ^sTTHsTG-TOTST.' 3 



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MRS. DEANWS WAY, , 1.25 

D. LOTHEOP ft CO., Publishers. 



fi HISTORIC HYMNS. 

Collected by REV. W. F. CRAFTS. 

Music arranged under the supervision of Dr. E. Tourjee. 

A COLLECTION OF 

a hundred popular Standard Hymns, of which incidents 
are given in " Trophies of Song." A pamphlet of thirty- two 
pages, in stout covers, which affords 

A CHEAP HYMN BOOK 

for Sunday Schools, Congregational Singing, Praise Meetings, 
Concerts, Camp Meetings and Special Services. It has 
doubled the volume of congregational singing in churches, 
where it has been used, by furnishing the words, at a slight 
expense, to every person in the congregation. Besides the 
hymns, "Bible Readings," Responsive Readings, Introduc- 
tory Responsive Services, &c, &c, are also included. Com- 
mended by I. D. Sankey, P. P. Bliss, and other prominent 
singers* 

Price, in Stout Paper Cover, per 100, - - &7.00. 
" " Cloth, per 100, ----- 10.00. 

Send ten cents for specimen copy. 



TROPHIES OF SONG. 

By Rev. W. F. Crafts. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DR. E. TOURJEE. 

A COMPILATION OF 

200 STRIKING INCIDENTS, 

connected with the origin and history of our most popular 
hymns, both of the Church and Sunday School, together 
with articles by prominent writers on " Praise Meetings," 
" Congregational Singing," "Sunday School Singing," and 
all the various uses of sacred music. Its suggestions and in- 
cidents make it valuable to pastors, superintendents and 
choristers, and its numerous and thrilling incidents give it 
interest for the general reader and even for children. Pries 
$1.25. 

D. LOTHBOP & CO., Publishers, 



SUGAR PLUMS. Poems by Ella Farman. Pic- 
tures by Miss C. A. Northam. Price, $i oo. D. Lothrop 
& Co., Boston. 

This collection of sweets, which the critics say is the 
best verse-bookpublished since " Lilliput Levee," will prob- 
ably prove to be one of the most popular Christmas-Tree 
books of the season. The poems are written from a child's 
own point-of-view, and some of them, like "Learning to 
Count," "Baby's Frights," " Pinkie- Winkie-Posie-Bell," 
will be perennial favorites in the nursery. While the book 
is sure to captivate the baby-memory, we will whisper to 
the mothers that there is not an idle "jingle" in the vol- 
ume, but that every verse will subtly give a refining and 
shaping touch to the little child-soul. The book is at- 
tractively bound, handsomely illustrated, and ought to be 
found in every Christmas Stocking in the land. 

Ask your Bookseller for it. 

POEMS IN COMPANY WITH CHILDREN. — By 
Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt. Illustrated. Price, $i 50. D. 
Lothrop & Co., Boston. 

A mother's book — one of those dainty, treasured vol- 
umes of poetry which naturally find a resting-place in the 
mother's work-basket, always at hand, to be taken up in a 
tender moment. It also contains many poems to be read 
aloud in the twilight hour when the children gather around 
mother's knee. Of its literary excellence it is needless to 
speak as Mrs. Piatt stands at the head of American women 
poets. 



THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME.— 

By Pansy. Author of "Four Girls at Chautauqua,," &c. 
Boston: D. Lothkop & Co. Price, $1.50. 

The four brilliant young ladies, three from the highest 
social ranks, and one a teacher with infidel tendencies, who, 
having abandoned Newport and Saratoga for Chautauqua 
Lake and its Sunday-school Assembly, were there converted, 
and, having returned to their city homes, with their simple 
faith and joyous experience, they enter the First Church, 
seeking Christian help and a field for usefulness. Hesi- 
tatingly they enter the Sunday-school. Their presence there 
is almost resented by pastor and superintendent, who knew 
of their former lives of social vaporing, but did not know of 
their conversion. The rebuff does not wholly dishearten 
the young ladies. They go to the social meetings, where 
their persistent attendance brings about an explanation. 
They confess Christ, are received into the Church, enter 
into its work with zeal, and by their efforts and influence 
remodel the Sunday-school, stir up the social meetings, and 
help to bring about a great revival. 

These young ladies in their developing lives represent four 
classes of Christians, with which every pastor has to deal, 
and from studying these models pastors can learn helpful 
lessons, for they are here depicted with a masterly skill. 
The First Church is a representative dead Church. The de- 
cayed members and the cause of death are pointed out. The 
question of social amusements for Christians is 'discussed 
and answered from the Bible. The Sunday-school is dull 
and inefficiently managed. How to improve it and make it 
a success is indicated in a practical way. In short, the 
whole case of spiritually dead Churches is diagnosticated 
with the wisdom of a practical physician, and the revivify- 
ing remedies prescribed. Pastors, superintendents, teachers, 
Christians, young and old, should read this book. It con- 
tains help for all. "Pansy" has written nothing better 
— JST. Y. Christian Advocate. 



UVEXSS CTTTIjI-A. JL. ZE^STIM^LIfcT is one of the most popular 
of our modern writers. 

YOUNG RICK. By Julia A. Eastman. Large 

161110. Twelve illustrations by Sol Ey tinge . $i 50 

A bright, fascinating story of a little boy who was both a bless- 
ing and a bother. — Boston Jotirnal. 

The most delightful book on the list for the children of the 
family, being full of adventures and gay home scenes and merry 
play-times. "Paty" would have done credit to Dickens in his 
palmiest days. The strange glows and shadows of her character 
are put in lovingly and lingeringly, with the pencil of a master. 
Miss Margaret's character of light is admirably drawn, while Aunt 
Lesbia, Deacon Harkaway, Tom Dorrance, and the master and 
mistress of Graythorpe poor-house are genuine "charcoal 
sketches." 

STRIKING FOR THE RIGHT. By Julia 

A. Eastman. Large i6mo. Illustrated . 1 75 

While this story holds the reader breathless with expectancy 
and excitement, its civilizing influence in the family is hardly to 
be estimated. In all quarters it has met with the warmest praise. 

THE ROMNEYS OF RIDGEMONT. By 

Jiclia A. Eastman. i6mo. Illustrated . 1 50 
BEULAH ROMNEY. By Julia A. Eastman. 

16 mo. Illustrated . . . . . 1 50 

Two stories wondrously alive, flashing with fun, sparkling with 
tears, throbbing with emotion. The next best thing to attending 
Mrs. Hale's big boarding-school is to read Beulah's experience 
there. 

SHORT-COMINGS AND LONG-GOINGS. 

By Julia A. Eastman. 16 mo. Illustrated. 1 25 

A remarkabls book, crowded with remarkable characters. It 
is a picture gallery of human nature. 

KITTY KENT'S TROUBLES. By Julia 

A. Eastman. 16 mo. Illustrated . .150 

"A delicious April-day style of book, sunshiny with smiles on 
one page while the next is misty with tender tears. Almost every 
type of American school-girl is here represented — the vain Helen 
Dart, the beauty, Amy Searle, the ambitious, high bred, conserv- 
ative Anna Matson ; but next to Kitty herself sunny little Paul- 
ine Sedgewick will prove the general favorite. It is a story fully 
calculated to win both girls and boys toward noble, royal ways of 
doing little as well as great things. All teachers should feel an 
interest in placing it in the hands of their pupils." 



BOQKS FOB ITOTJlSra- HEEOES -A-lsTX) BHAVE 

WOEZEBS. 

VIRGINIA. By ^ H. G.Kingston. 16 mo. 

Illustrated $i 25 

A stirring story of adventure upon sea and land. 

AFRICAN ADVENTURE AND ADVENT- 
URERS. By Rev. G. T. Day, D. D. 16 
mo. Illustrated . . . . - 1 50 

The stories of Speke, Grant, Baker, Livingstone and Stanley 
are put into simple shape for the entertainment of 3'oung readers. 

NO/BLE WORKERS. Edited by S. F. Smith, 

D. D. i6mo . . . . . . 1 50 

STORIES OF SUCCESS. Edited by S. F. 

Smith, D. D. i6mo . . . . . i 50 

Inspiring biographies and records which leave a most whole- 
some and enduring effect upon the reader. 

MYTHS AND HEROES. 16 mo. Illus- 
trated. Edited by S. F. Smith, D. D . . 1 50 

KNIGHTS AND SEA KINGS. Edited by 

S. F. Smith, D. D. 12 mo. Illustrated . 1 50 

Two entertaining books, which will fasten forever the historical 
and geographical lessons of the school-room firmly in the stu- 
dent's mind. 

CHAPLIN'S LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANK- 
LIN. i6mo. Illustrated . . . 1 50 

LIFE OF AMOS LAWRENCE. 121110. 111. 150 

Two biographies of perennial value. No worthier books were 
ever offered as holiday presents for our American young men. 

WALTER NEAL'S EXAMPLE. By Rev. 

Theron Brown. 16 mo. Illustrated . .125 

Walter Neal's Example is by Rev. Theron Brown, the editor of 
that very successful paper, The Youth" 1 s Companion. The story 
is a touching one, and is in parts so vivid as to seem drawn from 
the life. — N. Y. Independent. 

TWO FORTUNE-SEEKERS. Stories by 
Rossiter JoJmson, Louise ChaJidler Moulton, 
F. Stuart Fhelfis, Ella Farman, etc. Fully 
illustrated 1 50 



A Moment's Chat with our Friends. 



Pleasure Book, Pansy's Picture Book, Pictures for 
our Darlings, Two Fortune Seekers, Word Pictures, 
each deserve a permanent niche, being sweet and sound from 
the first page to the last. These are the work of our fore- 
most authors, Bayard Taylor, Miss Alcott, Mrs. Whitney, 
Eossiter Johnson, Mia Farman, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moul- 
ton, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Mrs. B. H. Stoddard, Sophie 

May, etc. We also believe that we offer, in our List 

for Boys, volumes which may safely be read without first 
passing under parental scrutiny and excision, but which at 
the same time shall satisfy a boy's longing for adventure 
and his admiration for the stirring and the heroic, and shall 
leave him resolute instead of restless, ready for action and 

patient toil, instead of filling his brain with idle dreams. 

Our list for Girls is eqully wholesome and entertaining. 
We also offer for examination the Wide Awake Maga- 
zine, edited by Ella Farman, D. Lothrop & Co., Boston, 
Publishers. This magazine is furnished at the low price of 
$2.00 per annum, post-paid. It is exquisitely illustrated by 
Sol Eytinge, Waud, Merrill, Jessie Curtis, Miss Halloclc, 
Miss Northam, Miss Humphrey, Mrs. Finley. Miss Parinan 
is supported by a brilliant array of contributors, Mrs. B. II. 
Stoddard, Mrs. Celia Thaxter, Mrs. S. M. B. Piatt, Mrs. 
Moulton, Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller, Bossiter JoJinson, 
Charles E. Hard, Sophie May, Margaret Eytinge, iVora 
Perry, etc. The attractions for 1877 include a serial by 
Sophie May, Quinnebasset Girls, Good-for-ISTothing 
Polly, by Ella Farman, and Child Marian Abroad, by 
Wm. M. T. Bounds, of the JST. Y. Independent, the latter be- 
ing records of a little girl's visits to the Pope, Empress Eu- 
genie, Princess Marie Valerie, Madame McMahon, etc., 

illustrated with portraits. We shall show this magazine 

to our patrons with pride and satisfaction, and receive and 
forward subscriptions. We are also able to furnish a cat- 
alogue of Messrs. Lothrop & Co.'s choice publications, in- 
cluding 500 vols., upon application. We can cordially com- 
mend Messrs. Lothrop & Co.'s publications, for their whole- 
someness of tone, their power of entertainment, and their 
superior graces of style. 



THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME. In sending forth a 

new and revised edition of this work the Publishers append a few of tit 
many favorable notices which, from various sources, testify to its 
catholicity, and its adaptation to the wants of the disciples of our Lord 
by whatever denominational name they may be called. 

The Name abOVe Every Name, or, Devotional Meditations. 
With a text for every day in the year. Ey the Rev. Samuel Cutler. 

This little volume, which is a gem of typography, is just what it claims 
to be — "devotional and practical.' The pure gold of the gospel is here 
without the base alloy of man's wisdom. It accords with the teachings 
of the divine Spirit, and tends to exalt in the souls of men the Christ oi 
God. 

The texts are fitly chosen, and the exquisite fragments of sacred poetry 

seem like jewels from a mine of inspiration. None can read this book 
devoutly without being benefited ; and all who read it in the spirit in which 
it appears to have been written, will lay down the volume with higher 
views of Christ's nature, and of His work, and reverently acknowledge that 
if His name be above every name in dignity and glory, it is also, as de- 
clared in the inspired canticle, "as ointment poured forth" in its heavenly 
fragrance . — Parish Visitor. 

From the Congregationist. 

The Name above Every Name, it has a chapter for every 

week in the year, each chapter preceded with appropriate passages from 
Scripture and closing with a choice selection from devotional poetry. The 
whole book is eminently evangelical, and fitted to foster the growth of 
true and genuine piety in the soul. 

The Name above Every Name. By the Rev. Samuel 

Cutler. This has been carefully prepared by its author. The texts are 
for every day in the year, and have reference to the Scriptural titles of 
our Lord. The devotional and practical meditations are for every week in 
the year. The appendix contains five hundred and twenty five titles of 
our Lord, with the Scriptual reference; also a topical and alphabetical list 
of the titles, and of first lines of poetry with the author's name. 

The work is exceedingly valuable, not only for its meditations, but for 
the great amount of information which it contains. It is a book which 
the Christian would do well always to have at hand. Evagelical Knowl' 
edge Society. 

The volume is a precious vade wecum, for all who love the "Name that 
is above every name" — Protestant Chtirchman. 
Plain Edition $1.00 Full Gilt $150 Red line Edition $2.00 

D. Lothrop & Co., Publishers, Boston, 






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